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tEljc Kifcerstoe iliterature Series 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



BY 

CHARLES LAMB 

M 

SELECTED 

WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, BIBLIOGRAPHY, 
AND NOTES 




- - k 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 85 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 373-388 Wabash Avenue 

($fce lftitier?toe pre&, Cambribae 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS] £} 
Two Copies Received 
MAY T7 !90"r 

Co/ynsrht Eatry 
CXfiA 30.(907 

CL#>S CL XXC, No. 
COPY B. S 




COPYRIGHT 1907 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CONTENTS 



Biographical Sketch 

Bibliography ...••• 

The South-Sea House ... • 

Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Y sars Ago 
Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist . • • 
A Chapter on Ears . . ■ • 
Witches, and Other Night-Fears . 

Valentine's Day 

My Relations 

The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 

Grace before Meat 

Dream-Children : A Reverie . 
Distant Correspondents . . • • 
The Praise of Chimney-S weepers . 
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 

BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

Poor Relations 

Stage Illusion 

Sanity of True Genius 

The Superannuated Man 

Old China . 

Popular Fallacies 

That a Man must not Laugh at his own Jest . 
That the Worst Puns are the Best . • • • 
That We must not Look a Gift-Horse in the Mouth 
That Home is Home though it is never so Homely . 
That We should Rise with the Lark . 
That We should Lie Down with the Lamb . 

Notes 



v 

xxi 

1 
12 
30 
40 
47 
56 
60 
69 
84 
93 

99 
107 
117 
127 
134 
143 
148 
152 
162 

170 
170 
173 

176 
182 
185 

130 



k 



CHARLES LAMB 

That period of English literature which began with the 
end of the eighteenth century and ended with the begin- 
ning of the second third of the nineteenth was one of great 
significance. It saw the full development of romantic poetry 
in the writings of the Lake Poets, and of romantic fiction 
in the novels of Scott ; it heard a note of genuine realism in 
the stories of Jane Austen ; it gave birth to the revolu- 
tionary poetry of Byron and Shelley ; it compassed the 
whole of the life of Keats, lover and creator of beauty ; it 
ushered in a brilliant group of essayists, Hazlitt, Jeffrey, 
Wilson, Lamb, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Landor, who, in 
the pages of the young reviews, aroused a fresh and a criti- 
cal interest in literature. Among these last, the most inter- 
esting personality, perhaps, was that of Charles Lamb, the 
" gentle Elia." To know Lamb is to know the whole group ; 
for his letters and essays are full of allusions to them all, 
and in their writings no name is spoken more often or 
more lovingly than his. " The most beloved of English 
writers may be Goldsmith or may be Scott," says Swin- 
burne, "but the best beloved will always be Lamb." 

Charles Lamb was born February 10, 1775, in the Tem- 
ple, on the banks of the Thames in London ; and in Lon- 
don or its immediate neighborhood he lived all his days. 
The most perfect description of his early home and of his 
father we may read in his essay, The Old Benchers of the 
Inner Temple. Of three children who survived infancy 
Charles was the youngest, and his name is forever indissol- 
ubly knit with that of his sister Mary, ten years 
older than himself. His earliest book learning Birth, 
came from a certain Mr. Bird, whose school ad- 1775, and 
mitted boys in the day and girls in the evening. 
" Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those uncom- 
fortable sloping desks," wrote Lamb in 1826, " where we 



vi INTRODUCTION 

sat elbowing each other; and the injunctions to attain a 
free hand, inattainable in that position ; the first copy I 
wrote after, with its moral lesson, ' Art improves Nature ; ' 
the still earlier pot-hooks and the hangers, some traces of 
which I fear may yet be apparent in the manuscript." 
Considering the poverty of the family, it was great good 
luck for Lamb, when eight years old, to be removed to 
Christ's Hospital, where he remained for the next seven 
years. His own words are again the best record we have 
of these years, — in Recollections of Christ's Hospital 
and Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago. Here 
began that memorable friendship with Coleridge, " the poor 
friendless boy," who used to steal away from the play- 
ground to read Vergil by himself. Coleridge's picture of the 
" Blue Coat School," as given in his Biographia Literaria, 
and Hunt's description of it as it was three years later, 
should be read, as giving with Lamb's an all-round impres- 
sion of this famous English school. Hunt speaks in his 
sketch of Lamb's " pensive, brown, handsome and kindly 
face," and of his Quaker-like dress that distinguished him 
through life. According to his own statement Lamb gained 
here the rank of deputy Grecian, — the next to the high- 
est ; but an impediment in his speech seems to have pre- 
vented his obtaining an " exhibition " to the university. 

At fifteen Lamb left school to help in the support of 
his family. To understand the home conditions to which 
he returned we need only read as biography Mackery End 
Lamp's * n Hertfordshire and My Relations. The elder 
Early brother, John, earning a good salary, living by 

Home himself and indulging his artistic tastes, troubled 

himself little with the needs of his family. Mary was to 
share with Charles all the anxieties of supporting and pro- 
tecting a helpless mother and invalid father. A dark shadow 
rested upon them all in the inherited taint of intermittent 
insanity which appeared in different forms in all the chil- 
dren, — both a memory and an expectation that darkened 
their happiest moments. But the brother and sister found 
solace in their common love of books, and in an occasional 
visit to their grandmothers country home at Blakesware, 



INTRODUCTION vii 

where carved woodwork, faded tapestries, and tangled gar- 
dens awakened all that love of beauty that breathes in the 

essay on Blakesmoor in H shire. 

Sometime during the next two years Lamb obtained a 
humble position in the South-Sea House. Of his service 

here we have no more exact account than the _ _. 

_ „ connection 

shadows of facts which we find in the first of w ith the 

the papers signed " Elia." Strangely enough, no South-Sea 
letter or bit of writing by Lamb exists dated 
earlier than 1795. In April, 1792, he obtained a better 
position in the East India Company, and in their service 
he remained the rest of his working days. In Connectlon 
this year of his promotion a small legacy was with the 
left to the family by Samuel Salt, in whose office East India 
Lamb's father had served for years as scrivener. 
This generous friend is appreciatively described by Lamb 
as S. in the essay on the Old Benchers ; and the " spa- 
cious closet of good old English reading" into which 
Mackery End tells us that Mary Lamb was "tumbled 
early to browse at will upon a fair and wholesome pastur- 
age " was, without doubt, his library. This bequest, with 
Lamb's own salary, and the little which Mary earned by 
sewing, seems to have been sufficient for the maintenance 
of their quiet home in Little Queen Street, Hoiborn. 

The greatest pleasures of these days were the occasional 
visits from Coleridge, now a student at Cambridge. At 
"The Salutation and the Cat," he and Lamb Friendship 
spent long evenings in discussing their favorite with 
writers, and dreaming of the time when they, Colerld £ e 
too, should be " authors in print." Coleridge was already 
writing verse for The Morning Chronicle, and in his first 
volume, published by Cottle of Bristol, in 1796, Lamb 
printed four sonnets of his own. " The effusions signed 
' C. L.' were written by Mr. Charles Lamb of the India 
House" may still be read in the preface of this edition. 
In these sonnets we may find, if we will, stray touches of 
the early romance of Lamb's life, — enough to gather that 
he gave his heart's love to his " fair-haired maid," while he 
was forced to give his devotion and support to the needs of 



viii INTRODUCTION 

his family. Perhaps he fearecl, also, his own inherited share 
of the family malady. One attack seems to have come upon 
him already, for in one of his earliest letters to Coleridge, 
1796, he writes : " The six weeks that finished last year 
and began this, your very humble servant spent very agree- 
ably in a mad house at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational 
now, and don't bite any more. But mad I was ! " 

The same year proved to be the most tragic in the family 
history of the Lambs. Mary, temporarily deranged by over- 
work, took the life of her mother. No one has written half 
so delicately of the awfulness of the calamity 
Mary 7 ° as Lamb himself to Coleridge: "My poor, dear, 
lamb's dearest sister, the unhappy and unconscious in- 
strument of the Almighty's judgment on our 
house, is restored to her senses ; to a dreadful sense and 
recollection of what has past, awful to her mind and im- 
pressive (as it must be to the end of life), but tempered 
with religious resignation and the reasonings of a sound 
judgment, which, in this early stage, knows how to distin- 
guish between a deed committed in a transient bit of frenzy 
and the terrible guilt of a mother's murder." The rest of 
the letter shows the steady courage and dutiful care which 
from now on marked Lamb's affection for his sister. The 
mania never returned upon him ; but Mary was to suffer re- 
curring attacks as long as she lived. One of the saddest pic- 
tures in all literature is that drawn for us by Charles Lloyd, 
who on one occasion met the brother and sister, " slowty 
pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton fields, both 
weeping bitterly ; and found on joining them, that they 
were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum." 

In 1797 Lamb became the lonely companion of his fa- 
ther, during whose lifetime he had decided that Mary 
should not return home. Books were now his greatest 
solace. He read and loved the old English writers of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, " preferring by-ways 
Lamia's ^° hig nwa ys." " I gather myself up unto the old 

love of things," he was always saying, and his dictum, 

Reading u w ;h eil a new "book comes out, I read an old one," 
has passed into history. His love for Beaumont, Fletcher, 



INTRODUCTION ix 

Massinger, Walton, and Browne was later to be reflected in 
the quaintness of his own constructions and diction. Yet 
was he not disdainful of the authors of his own day. Any- 
thing that was a book, he said, he could read. And so we 
find him actually enjoying Southey's juvenile attempt, Joan 
of Arc, even while he is leading the van in admiration of 
Burns and Wordsworth. His next venture in authorship was 
a contribution of poems to a second volume of Coleridge's, 
published under the title of Poems by S. T. Coleridge, to 
which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles 
Lloyd. A review of the day characterized Lamb's contribu- 
tions as "plaintive," and well they might be, dealing entirely 
with his own sad past. They brought their author little 
profit; and because of his anxiety to add to his scanty salary, 
he wrote, in 1798, the story called The Tale of Rosamund 
Gray and Old Blind Margaret. This little i^^g 
romance is almost as well worth reading as the Earliest 
essays, delightfully delicate, and weaving in many Writin £ s 
characteristic allusions to all Lamb's old favorites from 
Walton to Burns. To this year also belong the exquisite lines 
on The Old Familiar Faces. Coleridge, Lloyd, and Southey 
were now his closest friends, and, as Canon Ainger points out 
in his biography of Lamb, it was through these friendships, 
more than through his own early writings, that Lamb was 
feeling his way to his place in literature. 

After the death of his father in 1799, and the return of 
Mary from the hospital, Lamb, feeling that he and his 
sister were " marked " in their old home, takes lodgings 
again in the Temple, close to the home of his boyhood. 
" By my new plan," he writes, " I shall be as airy up four 
pairs of stairs as in the country, and in a garden LamVs 
in the midst of enchanting (more than Mahom- Settled 
edan paradise) London, whose dirtiest Arab- inthe 
frequented alley and her lowest-bowing* trades- Temple 
man I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, James, 
Walter, and the parson into the bargain. ! her lamps of 
a night ! her rich goldsmiths, print shops, toy shops, mer- 
cers, hardware men, pastry cooks, St. Paul's churchyard, 
the Strand, Exeter Change, Charing Cross with the man 



x INTRODUCTION 

upon the black horse ! . . * . All the streets and pave- 
ments are pure gold, I warrant you. At least, I know an 
alchemy that turns her mud into that metal — a mind that 
loves to be at home in crowds." In the heart of all this 
that he loved, he lived, with occasional changes of lodg- 
ings, for the next eighteen years. 

The few years following saw many experiments in writ- 
ing. For a short time Lamb played the role of joke-con- 
tributor to several daily papers. Newspapers Thirty-Five 
Years Ago tells us of the agony of concocting these quips 
two hours before breakfast each day. " Half a dozen jests 
in a day," he says, " why, it seems nothing ; we make twice 
the number every day in our lives as a matter of course. 
. . . But then they come into our heads. But when the 
head has to go out to them, when the mountain must go 
to Mahomet ! " Later he is busy putting into verse prose 
p ii f versions of German poems furnished him by 
Lamb's Coleridge; in this way he hoped to make £50 
First Plays ex t ra a year, and so " live in affluence. " To 
prove, however, that he meant finally to devote himself to 
more serious work, Lamb submitted to Coleridge, in 1799, 
a drama entitled at first Pride's Cure, afterwards John 
Woodvil. Contrary to the advice of both Coleridge and 
Southey, he sent the play to John Kemble, manager of 
Drury Lane Theatre, only to receive word nearly a year 
later that the manuscript had been lost. He furnished a 
second copy, but a personal interview with Kemble ended 
in its being refused. Lamb published it, nevertheless, in 
1802. The play is chiefly interesting to us now as evidence 
of the abandon with which the author yielded himself to 
the influence of the Elizabethan dramatists. In 1806 the 
proprietor of Drury Lane accepted Lamb's farce, Mr. H. 
When acted, it was a complete failure. At the first and 
only performance the curtain fell amid hisses, in which 
Lamb himself is said to have joined. But his courage in 
the face of these failures seems indomitable. He writes to 
Hazlitt, " Mary is a little cut at the ill success of Mr. H. t 
which came out last night and failed. I know you ? 11 be 
very sorry, too, but never mind. We are determined not 



INTRODUCTION xi 

to be cast down. I am going to leave off tobacco, and 
then we must thrive. A smoky man must write smoky 
farce s." 

In his next undertaking Lamb was more fortunate. 
This was doing, for William Godwin, twenty 
of Shakespeare's plays into stories for children, shake- 
His sister helped him in this work, writing her- speare, 
self the comedies and leaving to her brother the 
tragedies. In a letter of hers we read: " Charles has writ- 
ten Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and has begun Hamlet. 
You would like to see us as we often sit writing on one 
table, but not on one cushion like Hermia and Helena in 
Midsummer Night's Dream ; rather like an old literary 
Darby and Joan, I taking snuff, and he groaning all the 
while and saying that he can make nothing of it, w T hich he 
always says till he has finished, and then he finds out that 
he has made something of it." The Tales from Shake- 
speare came out in January, 1807, and were a success at 
once. No one probably knew the plays better than these 
two joint-authors, and to their accuracy of detail they added 
that simple, narrative style which has made their version 
beloved by young and old. The Tales still hold their own 
as the most sympathetic introduction young people can 
have to the reading of Shakespeare. Godwin next asked 
Lamb to translate for children the story of the Odyssey; 
and this was quickly followed, in 3808, by a more schol- 
arly work for which Lamb was eminently fitted, — Speci- 
mens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with 
Shakespeare. In this labor Lamb struck a new specimens 
note in criticism ; for his comments concerned of English 
themselves little with antiquarianism and philo- p oe ts, 
logy, and became rather studies of human life 1808 
as reflected in these early dramas. His preface says : " The 
plays which I have made choice of have been with few 
exceptions those which treat of human life and manners. 
. . . My leading design has been to illustrate what may 
be called the moral sense of our ancestors." If Lamb's 
notes pass over rather indifferently the points of construc- 
tion and characterization in the drama, they are, on the 



xii INTRODUCTION 

other hand, a long leap ahead! toward genuine appreciation 
of the knowledge of human life which is the foundation 
of all dramatic power ; more than that, they were a power- 
ful factor in reviving the works of the older dramatists, 
which English readers at that time had well nigh forgot- 
ten. " He flashed a light from himself upon them." 

During the next few years Lamb wrote but little, — 
one collection of stories, one of poetry for children, and 
one or two pieces of criticism published in Leigh Hunt's 
Reflector. In 1817 he had left the old home in the Temple 
for lodgings in Great Russell Street, on the site where 
once stood Will's Coffee-House. His worldly fortunes 
were now looking upward. His salary at the East India 
House was constantly increasing. The friends who invaded 
his home became so numerous that he says in his whimsi- 
cal way, " I am never C. L. but always C. L. and Co. He 
First who thought it not good for man to be alone 

Edition of preserve me from the more prodigious monstros- 
Works, ity of being never by myself." This round of 

1818 conviviality was doubtless the reason why eight 

years showed so little literary work accomplished. In 1818 
a complete collection of his writings was brought out. 
Writing to Coleridge, Lamb laughs at the " slender labours " 
dignified by the title of " Works," and says, " You will find 
your old associate in his second volume dwindled into prose 
and criticism ! " Not yet did he know that the world was 
in the end to love him best as an essayist. 

Lamb's admiration for the gifted comedian, Fannie 
Kelly, brings us in 1819 to an episode whose history, read 
Fannie in detail, contributes much to our affection for 

Kell y him. In 1818 he had written to her a sonnet in 

whose last lines genius nobly celebrated genius : ■ — 

Your tears have passion in them, and a grace 
Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; 
Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, 
That vanish and return we know not how — 
And please the better from a pensive face 
And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow. 

In the Examiner Lamb was writing frequent criticisms of 
her acting, and a fortnight after his praise of her perform- 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

ance of Rachel in The Jovial Crew, — in which Miss 
Kelly's wit must have detected more warmth than belongs 
to even the most enthusiastic appreciation, — he sent her 
his formal proposal of marriage. " As plainly and frankly 
as I have seen you give or refuse assent in some feigned 
scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me," he 
wrote. Her sincerity met his; and with her kind, firm 
refusal and Lamb's brave reception of her decision, the 
romance ended. But the old friendship remained unmarred 
as long as Lamb lived. Nothing is more lovable or noble 
in him than the habitual quietness with which he accepted 
such defeats. Of the suffering which they meant to him 
we can only catch glimpses here and there in the reveries 
and retrospects of his essays, or the confidences of his letters. 
In Dream Children we may read a memory of his love 
for the " fair-haired maid" of the early sonnets; and in 
Barbara S. we have an affectionate portrayal of one of 
the pathetic instances in the childhood of Fannie Kelly.- 

In August, 1820, Lamb contributed to the London 
Magazine an essay entitled Recollections of the South- Sea 
House, and signed the article Elia. This pen name he 
borrowed from an Italian fellow-clerk in the South-Sea 
House, one Elia. Possibly the name has never been pro- 
nounced as Lamb expected, for in a letter to J. Taylor, 
dated July 30, 1821, he says, referring to himself as Elia, 
"call him Ellia." In 1823 the Essays of Elia, which 
had appeared in the magazine at the rate of one almost 
every month from August, 1820, to December, Essays of 
1822, were collected into a single volume. They Elia » 1823 
were twenty-five in all, showing a variety of theme and 
mood, and an apparently careless grace that has been the 
admiration and despair of all who have tried since to im- 
itate them. No one has ever been able to write like Elia 
simply because there has been but one Charles Lamb ; and 
as we read we become unconsciously more interested in 
the essayist than in the essays. They have been aptly de- 
scribed as an "incomparable, amphibian result, which is 
half a Single Personality and half a Unique Literature, — 
Elia and the Essays of Elia." 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

In 1822 we find Lamb writing to Wordsworth, " I grow 
ominously tired of office confinement. Thirty years I have 
served the Philistines and my neck is not subdued to the 
yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the 
air of four pent walls without relief, day after day, all the 
Lamb in golden hours of the day between ten and four, 
Paris without ease or interposition." A summer va- 

cation in Paris gave him a welcome interposition, however ; 
but strangely enough not a word of his French experiences 
appears in his essays. What he might have written is sug- 
gested by a letter to his sister instructing her what Paris 
sights she must see. One sentence there reads : "Then there 
is a place where the Paris people put all their dead people, 
and bring them flowers and dolls and gingerbread-nuts and 
sonnets and such trifles ; " and in another letter he speaks 
characteristically of the Seine as "exactly the size to run 
through a magnificent street." 

The next year Lamb, for the first time, tries country 
life in quiet Dalston, where, freed from his " harpy-friends," 
Lamb's ne no P es *° ^ e ame *° write in uninterrupted 
Country seclusion. From here he sends word to Bernard 
Home Barton : " When you come Londonward, you will 

find me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in 
Colebrook Bow, Islington ; a cottage, for it is detached ; a 
white house with six good rooms ; the New Biver (rather 
elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace 
can be so termed) close to the foot of the house ; and 
behind is a spacious garden with vines (I assure you), pears, 
strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight 
the heart of old Alcinous. You enter without passage into 
a cheerful dining-room, all studded over and rough with 
old books ; and above is a lightsome drawing-room, three 
windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great lord, 
never having had a house before." At this time he con- 
tributed a few papers to the London Magazine, which was 
then seeing its last days, and in which Lamb says he felt 
like a rat lingering among creaking rafters. The irksome- 
ness of his office labors becomes stronger and stronger, but 
although he signifies to the East India Company his wish 



INTRODUCTION xv 

to resign, nothing happens. " I am sick of hope deferred," 
he writes. ... "I have a glimpse of freedom, of becom- 
ing a gentleman at large, but I am put off from day to day. 
I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor 
rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspense." 
But at the end of March, 1825, his withdrawal Lamb's 
was accepted, and an annual pension of more than Withdrawal 

'f TfYtrx t "h a 

half his salary was allowed him. The Super- East India 
animated Man is a fairly exact account of this Company 
long-looked-for consummation. " Here I am," he writes to 
Wordsworth in a few days, " after thirty-three years' slav- 
ery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock, this finest of all 
April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the 
remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who 
outlived his annuity, and starved at ninety." Occasionally 
Lamb had misgivings as to the wisdom of his decision ; 
and he even spent one homesick day at his old desk, almost 
regretting that he had deserted his companion clerks. But 
his philosophy was, " A man can never have too much 
Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I 
would christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should do nothing. 
Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he 
is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative." 
Some regular work, it is true, he still undertook, working 
at the British Museum from ten until four, making extracts 
from the collection of Elizabethan plays left to that insti- 
tution by Garrick ; but this enterprise shows a waning of 
the enthusiasm with which he had prepared his Dramatio 
Specimens twenty years before. A surer sign of his 
decreasing interest in life, however, appears in his confes- 
sion that London no longer stimulates and interests him. 
" The streets, the shops, are left," he writes, " but all old 
friends are gone. . . . When I took leave of our adopted 
friend at Charing Cross, ? t was heavy unfeeling rain, and 
I had nowhere to go. Home I have none, and not a 
sympathising house to turn to in the great city. Never 
did the waters of heaven pour down upon a forlorner 
head. ... I got home on Thursday, convinced that I 
was better to get to my home in Enfield" (whither he 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

had moved in 1827), "and'hide like a sick cat in the 
corner." 

In 1830 Lamb published his Album Verses, and in 
1831 he wrote for The Englishman's Magazine some 
prose fragments under the heading of Peter's Net. In 
Last 1833 the Last Essays of Elia closed the list 

Essays of of his writings. The next year Coleridge, the 
Elia, 1833 "archangel, a little damaged," as Lamb once 
called him, died; and in all the expression which Lamb 
gave to his grief he wrote nothing truer than that this 
friend was the " proof and touchstone " of all his cogita- 
tions. In some sense this bereavement was Lamb's death- 
blow. Coleridge and his own sister Mary stood closer to 
him than any one else in the world. The sister's infirm- 
Death of ity had increased during the years until a 
Coleridge greater part of her days had to.be spent in con- 
finement ; and Lamb had turned to Coleridge more appeal- 
ingly than ever. For weeks after the blow, even in the 
midst of the brightest company, he was often heard to say, 
as if lost in thought, "Coleridge is dead." In December 

Death of a ^ a ^ an( ^ a s ^g n ^ g asn upon his face resulted in 
Lamb, an illness which his weakening health could not 

combat. Before the end of the month, Decem- 
ber, 1834, Lamb had passed away and was buried in Ed- 
monton churchyard in the place where he had told his 
sister he wished to lie. 

Of all the tributes paid to Lamb two written by Words- 
Words- worth are worth reading again and again. The 
worth's first, better as a characterization than as poetry, 
Lam!) teSt0 wr itten the year after Lamb's death, begins as 
follows : — 

"To a good Man of most dear memory 
This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart 
From the great city where he first drew breath, 
"Was reared and taught; and humbh r earned his bread, 
To the strict labours of the merchant's desk 
By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks 
Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress 
His spirit, but the recompense was high; 
Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire; 
Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air; 
And when the precious hours of leisure came, 



INTRODUCTION xvil 

Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse sweet 

With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets 

With a keen eye, and overflowing heart; 

So genius triumphed over seeming wrong, 

And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love 

Inspired — works potent over smiles and tears. 

And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays, 

Thus innocently sported, breaking forth 

As from a cloud of some grave sympathy, 

Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all 

The vivid flashes of his spoken words. 

From the most gentle creature nursed in fields 

Had been derived the name he bore — a name 

Wherever Christian altars have been raised, 

Hallowed to meekness and to innocence; 

And if in him meekness at times gave way, 

Provoked out of herself by troubles strange, 

Many and strange, that hung about his life; 

Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 

A soul by resignation sanctified: 

And if too often, self-reproached, he felt 

That innocence belongs not to our kind, 

A power that never ceased to abide in him, 

Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins 

That she can cover, left not his exposed 

To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven. 

Oh, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived! 

The second, written in the same year, is a beautiful re- 
membrance of both Coleridge and Lamb : — 

Nor has the rolling year twice measured, 
From sign to sign, its stedfast course, 
Since every mortal power of Coleridge 
Was frozen at its marvellous source; 

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead, 
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: 
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, 
Has vanished from his lonely hearth. 

Mary Lamb, "that Madonna-like lady," as De Quincey 

called her, outlived her brother twelve years. At her 

death Crabb Robinson, their faithful friend, wrote, "She 

will live forever in the memory of her friends as one of 

the most amiable and admirable of women." The mutual 

devotion of this brother and sister is one of the _ .. . 
.-',,. -,., Deatn 01 

most beautiful relations remembered in litera- Mary 

ture. If we give full value to their natural tie Lamb, 
of kinship, their common memory of early suf- 
ferings endured together, their congenial tastes, and their 
almost religious consecration to each other's good, we 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

can even then hardly appreciate the strength of the bond 
that united them. The following lines in a letter from 
Charles Lamb to Miss Wordsworth in June, 1805, express 
this relationship most touchingly. "Your long kind letter 
has not been thrown away . . . but poor Mary, to whom 
it is addressed, cannot yet relish it. She has been attacked 
by one of her severe illnesses, and is at present/rora home. 
Last Monday week was the day she left me, and I hope I 
may calculate upon having her again in a month or so. . . . 
Meantime she is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All my 
strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-oper- 
ation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong ; so used 
am I to look up to her in the least and biggest perplexity. 
To say all I know of her would be more than I think any- 
body could believe or even understand. . . . She is older 
and wiser and better than I, and all my imperfections I 
cover to myself by resolutely thinking of her goodness. 
... I know she has cleaved to me for better, for worse ; 
and if the balance has been against her hitherto, it was a 
noble trade." 

We are prone to pigeon-hole people, and the world has 
long filed Charles Lamb with the jokers and punsters of lit- 
erature. It would be hard to draw him thence and label him 
anew Lamb the Philosopher, and yet he has a certain 
right to be thus re-christened. Intellectual strength is no- 
thing more than the ability to look straight at a thing, at 
a myriad of things ; to think one's own independent thought 
about them ; and never to tire of thinking and judging. 
Lamb's In- This is the attitude that makes for intellectual 
tellectual righteousness, and this attitude was Lamb's. 
Strength With, an imagination, a sentiment, a love of 
revery, a depth of feeling which could easily have mes- 
merized his mind into gentle lethargy, he was still men- 
tally wide awake. Every quality of intellect was alive in 
him, — energy, keenness, justness, precision. All these we 
might expect in his critical writings ; but they are easily 
found in the Essays of Elia, where every word is the 
precise, first-hand truth about something ; and even more 
easily in the Letters, where they are less concealed by con- 



INTRODUCTION • xix 

scious expression. Lamb's own friends looked up to him 
as an intellectual master. They loved the quips of his wit 
and the cranks of his humor not more than they admired 
the range and force of his thought and trusted the Tight- 
ness of his judgments. Perhaps we are slow to appreciate 
this aspect of Lamb's greatness because his whole person- 
ality takes us so by storm that we forget to analyze it into 
its parts ; perhaps Lamb himself has taught us to expect 
from him only the playful and fanciful. Hazlitt imputed 
Lamb's puns to humility, as if he had more profound 
things to say than he liked to venture in earnest, and so 
preferred the friendly cover of nonsense. In this case all 
his fun would be but the offspring of intellectual strength 
and activity, — a point of view it is only just to consider. 
It was inevitable that the real character of Charles 
Lamb should be often a matter of discussion. When a 
man devoutly voices the wish that the last breath he draws 
may be " through a pipe and exhaled in a pun," a hun- 
dred serious people will arise to call him trifler. Or when 
he stands always ready-cocked with a joke that can sting 
as well as tickle, those who wince under his wit may right- 
fully resent his favorite form of conversational humor. 
When Coleridge, referring to his days in the T ain1i » s 
Unitarian ministry, asked, " Charles, did you Personal- 
ever hear me preach ? " and Lamb replied, " I ity 
never heard you do anything else," he might feel a bit 
uncomfortable at the retort that came so near hitting the 
truth. Often, too, it seemed as if a spirit of perverseness 
impelled Lamb to show himself, especially among stran- 
gers, at his worst. Among those whom he impressed un- 
favorably was Carlyle, who, as of course he would, thought 
his conversation "contemptibly small" and a "ghastly 
make-believe of wit." Like many a sensitive nature Lamb 
was at his best with those he loved best. To them the 
" quivering sweetness " of his face, the lines that stood for 
suffering, sympathy, and deep thought, the soft twinkle of 
his eyes, and the inexpressible sadness of his smile spoke 
of a nature which they knew as full of oddities and con- 
tradictions, but at the same time fine, sincere, gentle, and 



xx INTRODUCTION 

strong of purpose. In the preface to the Last Essays of 
JElia we read lines which are doubtless Lamb's analysis of 
his own personality. There he says: " My late friend was 
in many respects a singular character. Those who did not 
like him, hated him : and some, who once liked him, after- 
wards became his bitterest haters. The truth is he gave 
himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose 
presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would 
e'en out with what came uppermost. . . . Few understood 
him, and I am not certain that at all times he quite under- 
stood himself." But those of us who know Lamb through 
his writings know him only to love him ; for those works 
are " of all modern literature/' as Talfourd says, "most 
immediately directed to give us heart's-ease and make us 
happy." And to many of us his reconcilement to life is a 
more convincing argument for good than the polemics of a 
strenuous reformer. 



BIBLIOGKAPHY 

Lucas, E. V., Life of Charles Lamb. 

(Editor) , Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. 7 vols. 
Talfourd, T. N., Life and Letters of Charles Lamb. 
Final Memorials of Charles Lamb. 
Literary Sketches and Letters. 
Ainger, A., Charles Lamb (English Men of Letters). 
(Editor), Letters of Charles Lamb. 
(Editor) , Essays of Elia. 
Fitzgerald, P., Charles Lamb; his Friends, his Haunts, and his 

Books. 
Hazlitt, W., The Lambs; their Lives, their Friends, and their 
Correspondence . 
Mary and Charles Lamb ; Poems, Letters, and Remains. 
De Quincey, T., Biographical Essays. 
Dobell, B., Sidelights on Charles Lamb. 
Clarke, Mr. and Mrs. Cowden, Recollections of Writers (a few 

pages devoted to Lamb). 
Stoddard, R. H. (Editor), Personal Recollections of Lamb and 

Others. 
Barry Cornwall, Charles Lamb, a Memoir. 
Mrs. Gilchrist, Mary Lamb (Famous Women Series). 
Martin, E. B., In the Footprints of Charles Lamb (a sort of to- 
pographical biography, fully illustrated). 
The best short account of Lamb's life and works is that writ- 
ten by Mr. William Macdonald as an Introduction to Dent's 
edition of the complete works of Lamb. 

The following contain frequent interesting allusions to Lamb: 
Fields, J. T., Yesterdays with Authors (chapter on Barry Corn- 
wall). 
Hazlitt, W., Table Talk. 

Spirit of the Age. 
Pater, W., Appreciations. 
Gilfillan, G., Literary Portraits. 
Hutton, L., Literary Landmarks of London. 
Hunt, Leigh, Autobiography. 
Pat more, P. S., My Friends and Acquaintances. 
Southey, C. C, Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. 
Wilson, J., Noctes Ambrosianae. 
Cottle, J., Early Recollections of Coleridge. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE * 

Reader, in thy passage from the Bank 2 — where 
thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends 
(supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself) — 
to the Flower Pot, 3 to secure a place for Dalston, or 
Shacklewell, 4 or some other thy suburban retreat 
northerly, — didst thou never observe a melancholy 
looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left 
— where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate ? 
I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent 
portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave 
court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces 
of goers-in or comers-out — a desolation something 
like Balclutha's.* 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy 
interests. The throng of merchants was here — the 
quick pulse of gain — and here some forms of business 
are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. 
Here are still to be seen stately porticos; imposing 
staircases ; offices roomy as the state apartments in 
palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a few strag- 
gling clerks ; the still more sacred interiors of court 
and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, 
door-keepers — directors seated in form on solemn 
days (to proclaim a dead dividend) at long worm- 

* " I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." 

OssiAN. 



2 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished 
gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver ink- 
stands long since dry ; — the oaken wainscots hung with 
pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of 
Queen Anne, 5 and the two first monarchs of the Bruns- 
wick dynasty ; 5 — huge charts, which subsequent dis- 
coveries have antiquated ; — dusty maps of Mexico, 
dim as dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of Panama ! 
— The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in 
idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any, 
short of the last, conflagration : — with vast ranges of 
cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight 
once lay, an " unsunned heap, " 6 for Mammon 1 to 
have solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since 
dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the 

breaking of that famous Bubble. 

Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it 
was forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent 
relic ! What alterations may have been made in it 
since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, 
I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has 
resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. A thicker 
crust by this time stagnates upon it. The moths, that 
were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and 
day-books, have rested from their depredations, but 
other light generations have succeeded, making fine 
fretwork among their single and double entries. Lay- 
ers of dust have accumulated (a superfcetation of 
dirt !) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be dis- 
turbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, in- 
quisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen 
Anne's reign ; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking 
to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 3 

hoax, whose extent the petty peculators of our day- 
look back upon with the same expression of incredu- 
lous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as 
would become the puny face of modern conspiracy 
contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's superhuman 
plot. 8 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and 
destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a me- 
morial ! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and 
living commerce, — amid the fret and fever of specu- 
lation — with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the 
India-house about thee, in the hey-day of present pros- 
perity, with their important faces, as it were, insulting 
thee, their poor neighbour out of business — to the idle 
and merely contemplative, — to such as me, old house ! 
there is a charm in thy quiet : — a cessation — a cool- 
ness from business — an indolence, almost cloistral — 
which is delightful! With what reverence have I 
paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide ! 
They spoke of the past: — the shade of some dead 
accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by 
me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and accountants 
puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great 
dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the 
preseut day could lift from their enshrining shelves 
— with their old fantastic flourishes, and decorative 
rubric interlacings — their sums in triple columnia- 
tions, set down with formal superfluity of cyphers — 
with pious sentences at the beginning, without which 
our religious ancestors never ventured to open a book 
of business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers 
of some of them almost persuading us that we are got 



4 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

into some better library, —? are very agreeable and edi- 
fying spectacles. I can look upon these defunct drag- 
ons with complacency. Thy heavy, odd-shaped ivory- 
handled penknives (our ancestors had everything on a 
larger scale than we have hearts for) are as good as 
any thing from Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes of 
our days have gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I remember in the South- 
Sea House — I speak of forty years back — had an air 
very different from those in the public offices that I 
have had to do with since. They partook of the genius 
of the place ! 

They were mostly (for the establishment did not 
admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally 
(for they had not much to do) persons of a curious 
and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a 
reason mentioned before. Humorists, for they were 
of all descriptions ; and, not having been brought to- 
gether in early life (which has a tendency to assimi- 
late the members of corporate bodies to each other), 
but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe 
or middle age, they necessarily carried into it their 
separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so 
speak, as into a common stock. Hence they formed 
a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. 
Domestic retainers in a great house, kept more for 
show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat — 
and not a few among them had arrived at consider- 
able proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro- 
Briton. 9 He had something of the choleric complexion 
of his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a 
worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 5 

to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion 
which I remember to have seen in caricatures of what 
were termed, in my young days, Maccaronies. 10 He 
was the last of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a 
gib-cat u over his counter all the forenoon, I think I 
see him, making up his cash (as they call it) with 
tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one about him 
was a defaulter ; in his hypochondry ready to imagine 
himself one ; haunted, at least, with the idea of the 
possibility of his becoming one : his tristful visage 
clearing up a little over his roast neck of veal at An- 
derion's 12 at two (where his picture still hangs, taken 
a little before his death by desire of the master of the 
coffee-house, which he had frequented for the last five- 
and-twenty years), but not attaining the meridian of 
its animation till evening brought on the hour of tea 
and visiting. The simultaneous sound of his well- 
known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock 
announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in 
the families which this dear old bachelor gladdened 
with his presence. Then was his forte, his glorified 
hour ! How would he chirp, and expand, over a muffin ! 
How would he dilate into secret history ! His country- 
man, Pennant 13 himself, in particular, could not be 
more eloquent than he in relation to old and new Lon- 
don — the site of old theatres, churches, streets gone 
to decay — where Rosamond's pond 14 stood — the 
Mulberry Gardens 15 — and the Conduit in Cheap 16 
— with many a pleasant anecdote, derived from pa- 
ternal tradition, of those grotesque figures which Ho- 
garth 17 has immortalised in his picture of Noon, — 
the worthy descendants of those heroic confessors, who, 
flying to this country, from the wrath of Louis the 



6 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Fourteenth 18 and his dragoons, kept alive the flame 
of pure religion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog 
Lane, and the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 19 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had 
the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have 
taken him for one, had you met him in one of the 
passages leading to Westminster Hall. 20 By stoop, I 
mean that gentle bending of the body forwards, which, 
in great men, must be supposed to be the effect of an 
habitual condescending attention to the applications 
of their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you 
felt strained to the height 21 in the colloquy. The con- 
ference over, you were at leisure to smile at the com- 
parative insignificance of the pretensions which had 
just awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest 
order. It did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His 
mind was in its original state of white paper. A suck- 
ing babe might have posed him. What was it then ? 
Was he rich ? Alas, no ! Thomas Tame was very 
poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly gentle- 
folks, when I fear all was not well at all times within. 
She had a neat meagre person, which it was evident 
she had not sinned in over-pampering ; but in its veins 
was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some 
labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly 
understood, — much less can explain with any heraldic 
certainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious but 
unfortunate house of Derwentwater. 22 This was the 
secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — 
the sentiment — the bright solitary star of your lives, 
— ye mild and happy pair, — which cheered you in 
the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your 
station ! This was to you instead of riches, instead of 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 7 

rank, instead of glittering attainments : and it was 
worth them altogether. You insulted none with it; 
but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive armour 
only, no insult likewise could reach you through it. 
Decus et solamen. 28 

Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, 
John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor 
in good truth cared one fig about the matter. He 
" thought an accountant the greatest character in the 
world, and himself the greatest accountant in it." 24 
Yet John was not without his hobby. The fiddle re- 
lieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with other 
notes than to the Orphean lyre. 25 He did, indeed, 
scream and scrape most abominably. His fine suite of 
official rooms in Threadneedle Street, which, without 
anything very substantial appended to them, were 
enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself that lived 
in them, (I know not who is the occupier • of them 
now) * resounded fortnightly to the notes of a con- 
cert of " sweet breasts," as our ancestors would have 
called them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras — 
chorus singers — first and second violincellos — 
double basses — and clarionets — who ate his cold 
mutton, and drank his punch, and praised his ear. He 
sate like Lord Midas 26 among them. But at the desk 
Tipp was quite another sort of creature. Thence all 
ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. 
You could not speak of anything romantic without 

* I have since been informed that the present tenant of them 
is a Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of 
some choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, 
which I mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at 
the same time to refresh my memory with the sight of old 
scenes. Mr. Lamb has the character of a right courteous and 
communicative collector. 



8 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

rebuke. Politics were excluded. A newspaper was 
thought too refined and abstracted. The whole duty 
of man consisted in writing off dividend warrants. 
The striking of the annual balance in the company's 
books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance of 
last year in the sum of £25 Is. 6d.) occupied his 
days and nights for a month previous. Not that 
Tipp was blind to the deadness of things (as they 
call them in the city) in his beloved house, or did not 
sigh for a return of the old stirring days when South 
Sea hopes were young — (he was indeed equal to the 
wielding of any the most intricate accounts of the most 
flourishing company in these or those days) : — but to a 
genuine accountant the difference of proceeds is as no- 
thing. The fractional farthing is as dear to his heart as 
the thousands which stand before it. He is the true actor, 
who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant, must 
act it with like intensity. With Tipp form was every- 
thing. His life was formal. His actions seemed ruled 
with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his 
heart. He made the best executor in the world : he 
was plagued with incessant executorships accordingly, 
which excited his spleen and soothed his vanity in 
equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the 
little orphans, whose rights he would guard with a 
tenacity like the grasp of the dying hand, that com- 
mended their interests to his protection. With all this 
there was about him a sort of timidity — (his few 
enemies used to give it a worse name) — a something 
which in reverence to the dead, we will place, if you 
please, a little on this side of the heroic. Nature cer- 
tainly had been pleased to endow John Tipp with a 
sufficient measure of the principle of self-preservation. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 9 

There is a cowardice which we do not despise, because 
it has nothing base or treacherous in its elements ; it 
betrays itself, not you : it is mere temperament ; the 
absence of the romantic and the enterprising ; it sees a 
lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, " greatly 
find quarrel in a straw," 27 when some supposed honour 
is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a stage- 
coach in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a balcony ; 
or walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or looked down 
a precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon a water- 
party ; or would willingly let you go if he could have 
helped it: neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, 
or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle. 
Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, 28 
in whom common qualities become uncommon ? Can 
I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man 
of letters, the author, of the South-Sea House? who 
never enter edst thy office in the morning or quitted st 
it in mid-day (what didst thou in an office ?) without 
some quirk that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes 
are now extinct, or survive but in two forgotten vol- 
umes, 29 which I had the good fortune to rescue from 
a stall in Barbican, 30 not three days ago, and found 
thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a 
little gone by in these fastidious days — thy topics are 
staled by the " new-born gauds " of the time : — but 
great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, 31 and in 
Chronicles, 31 upon Chatham, 32 and Shelburne, and 
Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, 
and the war which ended in the tearing from Great 
Britain her rebellious colonies, — and Keppel, 33 and 
Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and 
Pratt, and Richmond — and such small politics. — — 



10 THE ESSA YS OF ELI A 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstrep- 
erous, was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. 34 He 
was descended, — not in a right line, reader (for his 
lineal pretensions, like his personal, favoured a little 
of the sinister bend) — from the Plumers of Hert- 
fordshire. So tradition gave him out ; and certain 
family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. 
Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) 
had been a rake in his days, and visited much in 
Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle, bach- 
elor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who has 
represented the county in so many successive parlia- 
ments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Wal- 
ter flourished in George the Second's days, and was 
the same who was summoned before the House of 
Commons about a business of franks, with the old 
Duchess of Marlborough. You may read of it in 
Johnson's " Life of Cave." Cave came off cleverly in 
that business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing 
to discountenance the rumour. He rather seemed 
pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, insin- 
uated. But, besides his family pretensions, Plumer 
was an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously. 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, 

child-like, pastoral M ; ^ a flute's breathing less 

divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, 
in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song 
sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, 36 which pro- 
claims the winter wind more lenient than for a man 

to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M , the 

unapproachable churchwarden of Bishopsgate. He 
knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, 
gentle offspring of blustering winter: — only unfor- 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 11 

tunate in thy ending, which should have been mild, 
conciliatory, swan-like.' 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise 
up, but they must be mine in private : — already I 
have fooled the reader to the top of his bent ; — else 
could I omit that strange creature Woollet, who ex- 
isted in trying the question, and bought litigations f 
— and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hep worth, 
from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the 
law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a 
pen — with what deliberation would he wet a wa- 
fer r 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling 
fast over me — it is proper to have done with this 
solemn mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all 
this while — perad venture the very names, which I 
have summoned up before thee, are fantastic 37 — in- 
substantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and old John 
Naps of Greece : 38 

Be satisfied that something answering to them has 
had a being. Their importance is from the past. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY 
YEARS AGO 1 

In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two 
since, I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school, 2 
such as it was, or now appears to him to have been, 
between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very 
oddly, that my own standing at Christ's was nearly 
corresponding with his ; and, with all gratitude to him 
for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he has 
contrived to bring together whatever can be said in 
praise of them, dropping all the other side of the ar- 
gument most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect 
that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and 
others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived 
in town, and were near at hand ; and he had the priv- 
ilege of going to see them, almost as often as he 
wished, through some invidious distinction, which was 
denied to us. The present worthy sub-treasurer to the 
Inner Temple 3 can explain how that happened. He 
had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we 
were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — 
our cruet — moistened with attenuated small beer, in 
wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack 
it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porritch, 
blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, 
coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice 
of " extraordinary bread and butter," from the hot- 
loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 13 

somewhat less repugnant — (we had three banyan 4 to 
four meat days in the week) — was endeared to his 
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of 
ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the 
fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sun- 
days, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong 
as caro equina), 5 with detestable marigolds floating 
in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton 
crags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but 
grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted 
or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited 
our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in al- 
most equal proportion) — he had his hot plate of roast 
veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics unknown 
to our palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen (a 
great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or 
aunt I ® I remember the good old relative (in whom 
love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd 
stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the 
viands (of higher regale than those cates which the 
ravens ministered to the Tishbite) ; and the contend- 
ing passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love 
for the bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and 
the manner of its bringing ; sympathy for those who 
were too many to share in it ; and, at top of all, hun- 
ger (eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant, 
breaking down the stony fences of shame, and awk- 
wardness, and a troubling over-consciousness. 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those 
who should care for me, were far away. Those few ac- 
quaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon 
being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced 
notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my 



14 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday 
visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though 
I thought them few enough ; and, one after another, 
they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six 
hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his 
early homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have 
towards it in those unfledged years ! How, in my 
dreams, would my native town (far in the west) come 
back, with its church, and trees, and faces ! How I 
would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart 
exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire ! 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left 
by the recollection of those friendless holidays. The 
long warm days of summer never return but they 
bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory 
of those whole-day-leaves, when, by some strange ar- 
rangement, we were turned out, for the live-long day, 
upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to, 
or none. I remember those bathing excursions to the 
New River, which L. recalls with such relish, better, 
I think, than he can — for he was a home-seeking lad, 
and did not much care for such water-pastimes. — 
How merrily we would sally forth into the fields ; and 
strip under the first warmth of the sun ; and wanton 
like young dace in the streams ; getting us appetites 
for noon, which those of us that were penniless (our 
scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not 
the means of allaying — while the cattle, and the 
birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us, and we 
had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of 
the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense 
of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them ! — How 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 15 

faint and languid, finally we would return, towards 
nightfall, to our desired morsel, half -rejoicing, half- 
reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had 
expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling 
about the streets objectless — shivering at cold win- 
dows of print-shops, to extract a little amusement ; or 
haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little novelty, 
to pay a fifty-times repeated visit (where our individ- 
ual faces should be as well known to^ the warden as 
those of his own charges) to the Lions in the Tower 7 
— lo whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a 
prescriptive title to admission. 

L.'s governor 8 (so we called the patron who pre- 
sented us to the foundation) lived in a manner under 
his paternal roof. Any complaint which he had to 
make was sure of being attended to. This was under- 
stood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him 
against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of 
the monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes 
are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have been 
called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in 
the coldest winter nights — and this not once, but 
night after night — in my shirt, to receive the disci- 
pline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, 
because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has 
been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, 
to make the six last beds in the dormitory, where 
the youngest children of us slept, answerable for an 
offence they neither dared to commit, nor had the 
power to hinder. — The same execrable tyranny drove 
the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet 
were perishing with snow; and under the cruellest 



16 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

penalties, forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, 
when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with 
the season, and the day's sports. 

There was one H *^ c/ ' , 9 who, I learned, in after 
days, was seen expiating some maturer offence in the 
hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying that this 

might be the planter of that name, who suffered at 

Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts, some few years since? 

My friend Tobin 10 was the benevolent instrument of 
bringing him to the gallows.) This petty Nero actu- 
ally branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red- 
hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of us, with exact- 
ing contributions, to the one half of our bread, to 
pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, 
with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young 
flame of his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and 
keep upon the leads of the ward, as they called our 
dormitories. This game went on for better than a 
week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare well but 
he must cry roast meat — happier than Caligula's, 
minion, 11 could he have kept his own counsel — but, 
f oolisher, alas ! than any of his species in the fables — 
waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of bread, one 
unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortune 
to the world below ; and, laying out his simple throat, 
blew such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling down the 
walls of his own Jericho) 12 set concealment any longer 
at defiance. The client was dismissed, with certain 
attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never understood that 
the patron underwent any censure on the occasion. 
This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 13 

Under the same facile administration, can L. have 
forgotten the cool impunity with which the nurses 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 17 

used to carry away openly, in open platters, for their 
own tables, one out of two of every hot joint, which 
the careful matron had been seeing scrupulously 
weighed out for our dinners ? These things were 
daily practised in that magnificent apartment, which 
L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) praises 
so highly for the grand paintings " by Verrio, and 
others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." u 
But the sight of sleek, well-fed blue-coat boys in pic- 
tures was, at that time, I believe, little consolatory to 
him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part 
of eur provisions carried away before our faces by 
harpies ; and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan in 
the hall of Dido) 

"To feed our mind with idle portraiture." 15 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to 
gags, or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it 
down to some superstition. But these unctuous mor- 
sels are never grateful to young palates (children are 
universally fat-haters) and in strong, coarse, boiled 
meats, wisalted, are detestable. A gaq-eatev in our 
time was equivalent to a goul , and held in equal de- 
testation. suffered under the imputation. 

" 'T was said, 



He ate strange flesh." ie 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather 
up the remnants left at his table (not many, nor very 
choice fragments, you may credit me) — and, in an 
especial manner, these disreputable morsels, which he 
would convey away, and secretly stow in the settle 
that stood at his bed-side. None saw when he ate 
them. It was rumoured that he privately devoured 



18 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of 
such midnight practices were discoverable. Some re- 
ported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to carry- 
out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, 
full of something. This then must be the accursed 
thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine how 
he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the 
beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went 
about moping. None spake to him. No one would 
play with him. He was excommunicated ; put out of 
the pale of the school. He was too powerful a boy to 
be beaten, but he underwent every mode of that neg- 
ative punishment, which is more grievous than many 
stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was ob- 
served by two of his school-fellows, who were deter- 
mined to get at the secret, and had traced him one 
leave-day for that purpose, to enter a large worn-out 
building, such as there exist specimens of in Chancery 
Lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism 
with open door, and a common staircase. After him 
they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four 
flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was 
opened by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion 
was now ripened into certainty. The informers had 
secured their victim. They had him in their toils. 
Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution 
most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, 17 the then 
steward (for this happened a little after my time), 
with that patient sagacity which tempered all his con- 
duct, determined to investigate the matter, before he 
proceeded to sentence. The result was, that the sup- 
posed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers of the 
mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 19 

i , an honest couple come to decay, — whom this 

seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved from 
mendicancy ; and that this young stork, at the ex- 
pense of his own good name, had all this while been 
only feeding the old birds ! — The governors on this 
occasion, much to their honour, voted a present relief 

to the family of , and presented him with a silver 

medal. The lesson which the steward read upon rash 
judgment, on the occasion of publicly delivering the 

medal to , I believe, would not be lost upon his 

auditory. — I had left school then, but I well remem- 
ber . He was a tall, shambling youth, with a cast 

in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile 
prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's 
basket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by 
himself, as he had done by the old folks. 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy 
in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the 
blue clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage the nat- 
ural terrors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely 
turned of seven ; and had only read of such things in 
books, or seen them but in dreams. I was told he had 
run away. This was the punishment for the first 
offence. — As a novice I was' soon after taken .to see 
the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlam ceils, 18 
where a boy coidd just lie at his length upon straw and 
a blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterwards sub- 
stituted — with a peep of light, let in askance, from a 
prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here 
the poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without 
sight of any but the porter who brought him his bread 
and water — who might not speak to him; — or of 
the beadle , who came twice a week to call him out to 



20 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

receive his periodical chastisement, which was almost 
welcome, because it separated him for a brief interval 
from solitude : — and here he was shut up by himself of 
nights, out of the reach of any sound, to suffer what- 
ever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident 
to his time of life, might subject him to.* This was the 
penalty for the second offence. — Wouldst thou like, 
reader, to see what became of him in the next degree? 
The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, 
and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irrevers- 
ible, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto dafe, 20 
arrayed in uncouth and most appalling attire — all 
trace of his late " watchet weeds " 21 carefully effaced, 
he was exposed in a jacket, resembling those which 
London lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap 
of the same. The effect of this divestiture was such 
as the ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. 
With his pale and frighted features, it was as if some 
of those disfigurements in Dante 22 had seized upon him. 
In this disguisement he was brought into the hall (X.'s 
favourite state-room), where awaited him the whole 
number of his schoolfellows, whose joint lessons and 
sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful 
presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; 
of the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for 
the occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr import, 
because never but in these extremities visible. These 

* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, 
accordingly, at length convinced the governors of the impolicy 
of this part of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the 
spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy of dungeons for children 
was a sprout of Howard's brain ; for which (saving the reverence 
due to Holy Paul), 19 methinks, I could willingly spit upon his 
statue. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 21 

were governors ; two of whom, by choice, or charter, 
were always accustomed to officiate at these Ultima 
Supplicia; 23 not to mitigate (so at least we understood 
it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber 
Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, were col- 
leagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning" 
rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare 
him for the mysteries. The scourging was, after the 
old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor accom- 
panied the criminal quite round the hall. We were 
generally too faint with attending to the previous dis- 
gusting circumstances, to make accurate report with 
our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. 
Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. 
After scourging, he was made over, in his San Benito, 2 * 
to his friends, if he had any (but commonly such poor 
runagates were friendless), or to his parish officer, 
who, to enhance the effect of the scene, had his station 
allotted to him on the outside of the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so 
often as to spoil the general mirth of the community. 
We had plenty of exercise and recreation after school 
hours ; and, for myself, I must confess, that I was never 
happier, than in them. The Upper and Lower Gram- 
mar Schools were held in the same room ; and an 
imaginary line only divided their bounds. Their char- 
acter was as different as that of the inhabitants on the 
two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. James Boyer 25 
was the Upper Master : but the Rev. Matthew Field 26 
presided over that portion of the apartment, of which 
I had the good fortune to be a member. We lived 
a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just 
what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried 



22 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any 
trouble it gave us, we might take two years in get- 
ting through the verbs deponent, and another two in 
forgetting all that we had learned about them. There 
was now and then the formality of saying a lesson, 
but if you had not learned it, a brush across the 
shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole 
remonstrance. Field never used the rod ; and in truth 
he wielded the cane with no great good will — hold- 
ing it " like a dancer." 27 It looked in his hands 
rather like an emblem than an instrument of authority; 
and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a 
good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own 
peace, nor perhaps set any great consideration upon 
the value of juvenile time. He came among us, now 
and then, but often stayed away whole days from us ; 
and when he came, it made no difference to us — he had 
his private room to retire to, the short time he stayed, 
to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and 
uproar went on. We had classics of our own, with- 
out being beholden to " insolent Greece or haughty 
Rome," 28 that passed current among us — Peter 
Wilkins — the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert 
Boyle — the Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy — and the like. 
Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic or scientific 
operation ; making little sun-dials of paper ; or weav- 
ing those ingenious parentheses, called cat-cradles; or 
making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; 
or studying the art military over that laudable game 
" French and English," 29 and a hundred other such 
devices to pass away the time — mixing the useful 
with the agreeable — as would have made the souls of 
Rousseau and John Locke 30 chuckle to have seen us. 



CHRIST S HOSPITAL 23 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest 
divines who affect to mix in equal proportion the gen- 
tleman^ the scholar, and the Christian ; but, I know 
not how, the first ingredient is generally found to be 
the predominating dose in I lie composition. He was 
engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at some 
episcopal levee, when he should have been attending 
upon us. He had for many years the classical charge 
of a hundred children, during the four or five first 
years of their education ; and his very highest form 
seldom proceeded further than two or three of the in- 
troductory fables of Phsedrus. 31 How things were suf- 
fered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the 
proper person to have remedied these abuses, always 
affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a 
province not strictly his own. I have not been without 
my suspicions, that he was not altogether displeased 
at the contrast we presented to his end of the school. 
We were a sort of Helots 32 to his young Spartans. 
He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to 
borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with Sar- 
donic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, " how 
neat and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale 
students were battering their brains over Xenophon 
and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by 
the Samite, 33 we were enjoying ourselves at our ease 
in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets 
of his discipline, and the prospect did but the more 
reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous 
for us ; his storms came near, but never touched us ; 
contrary to Gideon's miracle, 34 while all around were 
drenched, our fleece was dry. 35 His boys turned out 
the better scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage 



24 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without 
something of terror allaying their gratitude ; the re- 
membrance of Field comes back with all the soothing 
images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work 
like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemp- 
tions, and life itself a " playing holiday." 36 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction 
of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to un- 
derstand a little of his system. We occasionally heard 
sounds of the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tar- 
tarus. 37 B. was a rabid pedant. His English style 
was cramped to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for 
his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were 
grating as scrannel 38 pipes.* — He would laugh, ay, 
and heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble 

about Rex 39 or at the tristis severitas in vultu, 40 

or inspicere in patinas,* 1 of Terence — thin jests, 
which at their first broaching could hardly have had 
vis 42 enough to move a Roman muscle. — He had two 
wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The one 
serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. 
The other, an old discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon, 
denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the 
school, when he made his morning appearance in his 
p>assy, or passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. 

* In this and every thing B. was the antipodes of his co- 
adjutor. While the former was digging his brains for crude an- 
thems, worth a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly- 
fancy in the more flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic 
effusion of his, under the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is 
not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of literature. 
It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did not give it their 
sanction. — B. used to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, 
half-irony, that it was too classical for representation. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 25 

— J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double 
his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal 
milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you 
presume to set your wits at me ? " — Nothing was more 
common than to see him make a headlong entry into 
the schoolroom, from his inner recess, or library, and, 
with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's 
my life, Sirrah" (his favourite adjuration), "I have 
a great mind to whip you," — then, with as sudden a 
retracting impulse, fling back into his lair — and, after 
a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but 
the* culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive 
headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as 
if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory 
yell — " and I will too." — In his gentler moods, 
when the rabidus furor i3 was assuaged, he had resort 
to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have 
heard, to himself, of whipping the boy, and reading 
the Debates, at the same time ; a paragraph, and 
a lash between ; which in those times, when parlia- 
mentary oratory was most at a height and flourish- 
ing in these realms, was not calculated to impress the 
patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces of 
rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to 
fall ineffectual from his hand — when droll squinting 

W having been caught putting the inside of the 

master's desk to a use for which the architect had 
clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great 
simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing 
had been forewarned. This exquisite Precognition of 
any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory struck 
so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the 



26 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was 
unavoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an 
instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, 44 has pro- 
nounced a more intelligible and ample encomium on 
them. The author of the Country Spectator 45 doubts 
not to compare him with the ablest teachers of anti- 
quity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than with 
the pious ejaculation of C. — when he heard that his 
old master was on his death-bed — " Poor J. B. ! — 
may all his faults be forgiven ; and may he be wafted 
to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with 
no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars 
bred. — First Grecian 46 of my time was Lancelot 
Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since Co- 
grammar-master (and inseparable companion) with Dr. 

T e. 47 What an edifying spectacle did this brace 

of friends present to those who remembered the anti- 
socialities of their predecessors ! — You never met the 
one by chance in the street without a wonder, which 
was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub- 
appearance of the other. Generally arm in arm, these 
kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome 
duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, 
one found it convenient to retire, the other was not 
long in discovering that it suited him to lay down the 
fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the 
same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen 
helped it to turn over the Cicero De Amicitia, or some 
tale of Antique Friendship, which the young heart 
even then was burning to anticipate ! — Co-Grecian 
with S. wasTh- , 48 who has since executed with abil- 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 27 

ity various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. 

Th was a tall, dark, saturni ne youth, sparing of 

speech, with raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Middle- 
ton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta) a scholar 
and a gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation 
of an excellent critic ; and is author (besides the 
Country Spectator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, 
against Sharpe. — M. is said to bear his mitre high in 
India, where the regni novitas 49 (I dare say) suffi- 
ciently justifies the bearing. A humility cjuite as prim- 
itive as that of Jewel ^ or Hooker might not be 
exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo- 
Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, 
and the church which those fathers watered. The 
manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild, and 
unassuming. — Next to M. (if not senior to him) was 
Richards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most 
spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems : a pale, studious 
Grecian. — Then followed poor S - c ' , 51 ill-fated 
M ! 52 of these the Muse is silent, 

Finding some of Edward's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by. 53 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the 
day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery col- 
umn before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, 
Bard ! — How have I seen the casual passer through 
the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration 
(while he weighed the disproportion between the speech 
and the garb of the young Miranctula), 54 to hear 
thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the 
mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus 55 (for even in 
those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic 



28 THE ESSA YS OF ELI A 

draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar 

while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to 

the accents of the inspired charity-boy I Many were 
the " wit-combats " (to dally awhile with the words of 

old Fuller) between him and C. V. Le G -, 56 " which 

two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an Eng- 
lish man-of-war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, 
was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his 
performances. C. Y. L., with the English man-of- 
war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn 
with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all 
winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." 57 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, 
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial 
laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old 
Cloisters shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest 
of theirs ; or the anticipation of some more material, 
and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Ex- 
tinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, 
with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus 58 of 
the school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou 
didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, 
incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, 
suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the 

half -formed terrible " bl ," for a gentler greeting 

— " bless thy handsome face ! " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 
friends of Elia — the junior Le G tA ^ and F^— ; 59 
who impelled, the former by a roving temper, the 
latter by too quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of 
enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes sub- 
ject to in our seats of learning — exchanged their Alma 
Mater for the camp ; perishing, one by climate, and one 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 29 

on the plains of Salamanca : — Le G ft**~ P * sanguine, 
volatile, sweet-natured ; F ■ ^- > - ' dogged, faithful, anti- 
cipative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of 
the old Roman height about him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr v ' , 60 the present master of 
Hertford, with Marmaduke T f ' '' , &1 mildest of Mis- 
sionaries — and both my good friends still — close 
the catalogue of Grecians in my time. 



MES. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

" A clear fire, a clean hearth,* and the rigour of 
the game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah 
Battle (now with God) who, next to her devotions, 
loved a good game at whist. She was none of your 
lukewarm gamesters, your half and half players, who 
have no objection to take a hand, if you want one 
to make up a rubber ; who affirm that they have no 
pleasure in winning ; that they like to win one game and 
lose another ; that they can while away an hour very 
agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether 
they play or no ; and will desire an adversary, who has 
slipt a wrong card, to take it up and play another.* 
These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. 
One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it 
may be said, that they do not play at cards, but only 
play at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested 
them, as I do, from her heart and soul ; and would 
not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat her- 
self at the same table with them. She loved a thorough- 
paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and 
gave, no concessions. She hated favours. She never 
made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adver- 
sary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought 

* This was before the introduction of rugs, Reader. You must 
remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinders betwixt 
your foot and the marble. 

* As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one 
day and lose him the next. 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 31 

a good fight : cut and thrust. She held not her good 
sword (her cards) " like a dancer." She sat bolt up- 
right ; and neither showed you her cards, nor desired 
to see yours. All people have their blind side — their 
superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under the 
rose, that Hearts Was her favourite suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many 
of the best years of it — saw her take out her snuff- 
box when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle 
in the middle of a game ; or ring for a servant, till it 
was fairly over. She never introduced or connived at 
miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she 
emphatically observed, cards were cards : and if I ever 
saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century counte- 
nance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a 
literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded 
to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of candour, 
declared, that he thought there was no harm in un- 
bending the mind now and then, after serious studies, 
in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to 
have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her 
faculties, considered in that light. It was her business, 
her duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — 
and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards — • 
over a book. 

Pope was her favourite author : his Rape of the Lock 
her favourite work. She once did me the favour to 
play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated game 
of Ombre * in that poem ; and to explain to me how 
far it agreed with, and in what points it would be 
found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were 
apposite and poignant ; and I had the pleasure of send- 
ing the substance of them to Mr. Bowles : 2 but I sup- 



32 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

pose they came too late to be inserted among his in- 
genious notes upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; 
but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The for- 
mer, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to 
allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick shift- 
ing of partners — a thing which the constancy of whist 
abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture 
of Spadille 3 — absurd, as she justly observed, in the 
pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and garter 
gave him no proper power above his brother-nobility 
of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to the in- 
experienced, of playing alone ; — above all, the over- 
powering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole, 4 — to 
the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel 
or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ; — all 
these, she would say, make quadrille a game of capti- 
vation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was 
the solider game : that was her word. It was a long 
meal ; not like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or 
two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an even- 
ing. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to 
cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance- 
started, capricious, and. ever fluctuating alliances of 
the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, 
reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments 
of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel ; 5 
perpetually changing postures and connexions ; bit- 
ter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing 
and scratching in a breath ; — but the wars of whist 
were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, 
rational, antipathies of the great French and English 
nations. 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 33 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in 
her favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like 
the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes 
— that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable 
being can set up : — that any one should claim four by 
virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, 
without reference to the playing of the game, or the 
individual worth or pretensions of the cards them- 
selves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an 
ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She 
despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the 
colours of things. Suits were soldiers, she would say, 
and must have a uniformity of array to distinguish 
them : but what should we say to a foolish squire, who 
should claim a merit for dressing up his tenantry in 
red jackets, that never were to be marshalled — never 
to take the field ? — She even wished that whist were 
more simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have 
stript it of some appendages, which, in the state of 
human frailty, may be venially, and even commendably 
allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding of the 
trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit 
always trumps ? — Why two colours, when the mark 
of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them 
without it ? — 

" But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably re- 
freshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure 
reason — he must have his senses delightfully appealed 
to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where the 
music and the paintings draw in many to worship, 
whom your quaker spirit of unsensualising would have 
kept out. — You, yourself, have a pretty collection 
of paintings — but confess to me, whether, walking 



34 THE ESSAYS OP ELI A 

in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Van- 
dykes, 6 or among the Paul Potters 7 in the ante-room, 
you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant de- 
light, at all comparable to that you have it in your 
power to experience most evenings over a well -ar- 
ranged assortment of the court cards ? — the pretty 
antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the gay 
triumph - assuring scarlets — the contrasting deadly - 
killing sables — the ' hoary majest}^ of spades ' 8 — 
Pam in all his glory ! 8 — 

" All these might be dispensed with ; and, with their 
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might 
go on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards 
would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that 
is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere 
gambling. — Imagine a dull deal board, or drum head, 
to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant car- 
pet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly 
combatants to play their gallant jousts and tourneys in ! 

— Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers — 
(work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, 

— or as profanely slighting their true application as 
the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out 
those little shrines for the goddess) 9 — exchange them 
for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money) or 
chalk and a slate ! " — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness 
of my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments 
on her favourite topic that evening, I have always 
fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious crib- 
bage board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her 
maternal uncle ( Old Walter Plumer, whom I have else- 
where celebrated) 10 brought with him from Florence : — 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 35 

this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds came to me at 
her death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I 
have kept with religious care ; though she herself, to 
confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. 
It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her 
say, — disputing with her uncle, who was very partial 
to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pro- 
nounce " go" or " thatfs a go." She called it an ungram- 
matical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew 
her to forfeit a rubber (a five dollar stake), because 
she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave, 
which would have given it her, but which she must 
have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring 
"two for his heels." There is something extremely 
genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a 
gentlewoman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the 
terms — such as pique repique — the capot — they 
savoured (she thought) of affectation. But games for 
two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She 
loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus : 
— Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, with glory. 
But cards are war, in disguise of a sport : when single 
adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too pal- 
pable. By themselves, it is too close a fight : with spec- 
tators, it is not much bettered. No looker-on can be in- 
terested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of 
money ; he cares not for your luck sympathetically, or 
for your play. — Three are still worse ; a mere naked 
war of every man against every man, as in cribbage, 
without league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and 



36 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

contradictory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, 
and not much more hearty infractions of them, as in 
tradrille. But in square games (sAe meant whist) all 
that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accom- 
plished. There are the incentives of profit with honour, 
common to every species — though the latter can be 
but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, 
where the spectator is only feebly a participator. But 
the parties in whist are spectators and principals too. 
They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is 
not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an 
impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests be- 
yond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of 
skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an inter- 
ested — by-stander witnesses it, but because your part- 
ner sympathises in the contingency. You win for two. 
You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again 
are mortified ; which divides their disgrace, as the 
conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) 
your glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled, 
than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile 
feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War 
becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings as these 
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite 
pastime. 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play 
at any game where chance entered into the composition, 
for nothing. Chance, she would argue — and here again, 
admire the subtlety of her conclusion ! — chance is 
nothing, but where something else depends upon it. It 
is obvious, that cannot be glory. What rational cause 
of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace 
a hundred times together by himself ? or before spec- 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 37 

tators, where no stake was depending ? — Make a lot- 
tery of a hundred thousand tickets with but one for- 
tunate number — and what possible principle of our 
nature, except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to 
gain that number as many times successively, without 
a prize ? — Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance 
in backgammon, where it was not played for money. 
She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were 
taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. 
Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played 
for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. 
Played for glory, they were a mere setting of one man's 
wit — his memory, or combination-faculty rather — 
against another's ; like a mock-engagement at a review, 
bloodless and profitless. — She could not conceive a 
game wanting the spritely infusion of chance, — the 
handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people play- 
ing at chess in a corner of a room whilst whist was stir- 
ring in the centre, would inspire her with unsufferable 
horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, 
and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue 
( and I think in this case justly ) were entirely mis- 
placed, and senseless. Those hard head-contests can 
in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form 
and colour. A pencil and dry slate ( she used to say) 
were the proper arena for such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing 
the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a 
gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the 
better in something or other : — that this passion can 
scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game 
at cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; in 
truth, a mere drama; for we do but play at being 



38 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at 
stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily con- 
cerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. 
They are a sort of dream-fighting ; much ado ; great 
battling, and little blood shed ; mighty means for 
disproportioned ends ; quite as diverting, and a great 
deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious 
games of life, which men play, without esteeming 
them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment 
on these matters, I think I have experienced some 
moments in my life, when playing at cards for nothing 
has even been very agreeable. When I am in sick- 
ness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for 
the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with 
my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 11 

I grant there is something sneaking in it : but with 
a toothache or a sprained ankle, — when you are sub- 
dued and humble, — you are glad to put up with an 
inferior spring of action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as 
sick whist. — 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I depre- 
cate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! 
to whom I should apologise. — 

At such times those terms which my old friend ob- 
jected to, come in as something admissible. — I love 
to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean 
nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those 
shadows of winning amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
capotted 12 her) — (dare I tell thee how foolish I am ?) 
— I wished it might have lasted for ever, though we 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 39 

gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a 
mere shade of play : I would be content to go on in 
that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be ever 
boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my 
foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the 
game was over : and as I do not much relish appli- 
ances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I 
should be ever playing. 



X 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 



I have no ear.- 



Mistake me not, reader, — nor imagine that I am 
by nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, 
hanging ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) 
handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my 
mother had never borne me. — I am, I think, rather 
delicately than copiously provided with those conduits ; 
and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his 
plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those ingen- 
ious labyrinthine inlets — those indispensable side- 
intelligencers. 

Neither have I incurred, nor done anything to 
incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which 
constrained him to draw upon assurance — to feel 
" quite unabashed," * and at ease upon that article. 
I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory ; nor, if I 
read them aright, is it within the compass of my des- 
tiny, that I ever should be. 

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will 
understand me to mean — for music. — To say that 
this heart never melted at the concourse of sweet 
sounds, 2 would be a foul self-libel. — " Water parted 
from the sea ,? 3 never fails to move it strangely. So 
does " In infancy. " 3 But they were used to be sung 
at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument in 
vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest, 

* " Earless on high stood, unabashed, Defoe." Dunciad. Defoe 
had his ears cropped and was placed in the pillory. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 41 

sure, that ever merited the appellation — the sweetest 

— why should I hesitate to name Mrs. S , * once 

the blooming Fanny Weatheral of the Temple — who 
had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he 
was, even in his long coats ; and to make him glow, 
tremble, and blush with a passion that not faintly 
indicated the day-spring of that absorbing sentiment, 
which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and 
subdue his nature quite, for Alice W n. 4 

I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to 
harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. 
I have been practising " God save the King " all my 
life ; whistling and humming of it over to myself in 
solitary corners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, 
within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of 
Elia never been impeached. 

I am not without suspicion that I have an unde- 
veloped faculty of music within me. For, thrumming, 
in my wild way, on my friend A.'s 5 piano, the other 
morning, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlour, 

— on his return he was pleased to say, " he thought it 
could not he the maid! " On his first surprise at hear- 
ing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and master- 
ful way, not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted 
on Jenny. But a grace, snatched from a superior 
refinement, soon convinced him that some being, — 
technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from 
a principle common to all the fine arts, — had swayed 
the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less 
cultivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from 
them. I mention this as a proof of my friend's penetra- 
tion and not with any view of disparaging Jenny. 

* Spinkes. 



42 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Scientifically I could never be made to understand 
(yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music 
is ; or how one note should differ from another. Much 
less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. 
Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess 
at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagree- 
able. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of 
the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I 
profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am 
ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto 
and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to 
me; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as Bara- 
lipton. % 

It is hard to stand alone — in an age like this, — 
(constituted to the quick and critical perception of all 
harmonious combinations, I verily believe, beyond all 
preceding ages, since Jubal 7 stumbled upon the gamut) 
to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic 
influences of an art, which is said to have such an 
especial stroke at soothing, elevating and refining the 
passions. — Yet rather than break the candid current 
of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have 
received a great deal more pain than pleasure from 
this so cried-up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A car- 
penter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret 
me into more than midsummer madness. But those 
unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured 
malice of music. The ear is passive to those single 
strokes ; willingly enduring stripes, while it hath no 
task to con. To music it cannot be passive. It will 
strive — mine at least will — 'spite of its inaptitude 
to thrid the maze ; like an unskilled eye painfully 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 43 

poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat. through an 
Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable 
anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places 
of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds 
which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the 
distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren atten- 
tion ! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage 
of honest, common-life sounds ; — and the purgatory of 
the Enraged Musician 8 becomes my paradise. 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the 
purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces 
of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's 9 
Laughing Audience !) immovable, or affecting some 
faint emotion, — till (as some have said, that our 
occupations in the next world will be but a shadow of 
what delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in 
some cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms 
of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the 
enjoyment ; or like that — 

Party in a parlour, 



All silent, and all damned : 10 
Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces 
of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter 
my apprehension. — Words are something ; but to be 
exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be 
long a dying, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; 
to keep up languor by unintermitted effort ; to pile 
honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an inter- 
minable tedious sweetness ; to fill up sound with feel- 
ing, and strain ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on 
empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for 
yourself ; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to 
supply the verbal matter ; to invent extempore trage- 



44 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

dies to answer to the vague gestures of ah inexplica- 
ble rambling mime — these are faint shadows of what 
I have undergone from a series of the ablest-executed 
pieces of this empty instrumental music. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have 
experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable : 

— afterwards f olloweth the languor, and the oppres- 
sion. Like that disappointing book in Patmos ; u or, 
like the comings on of melancholy, described by Bur- 
ton, 12 doth music make her first insinuating approaches : 

— " Most pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given, 
to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood 
and water, by some brook side, and to meditate upon 
some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall 
affect him most, amabilis insania, 13 and mentis gra- 
tissimus error. 1 * A most incomparable delight to build 
castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting 
an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and 
strongly imagine, they act, or that they see done. — 
So delightsome these toys at first, they could spend 
whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years 
in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, 
which are like so many dreams, and will hardly be 
drawn from them — winding and unwinding them- 
selves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their hu- 
mours, until at last the scene turns upon a sudden, 
and they being now habitated to such meditations, 
and solitary places, can endure no company, can think 
of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, 
sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, 15 discontent, 
cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sud- 
den, and they can think of nothing else : continually 
suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this in- 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 45 

fernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terri- 
fies their souls, representing some dismal object to their 
minds ; which now, by no means, no labour, no per- 
suasions they can avoid, they cannot be rid of it, they 
cannot resist." 

Something like this " scene-turning " I have ex- 
perienced at the evening parties, at the house of my 

good Catholic friend Nov ; 16 who, by the aid of 

a capital organ, himself the most finished of players, 
converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his week days 
into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.* 

When my friend commences upon one of those 
solemn anthems which peradventure struck upon my 
heedless ear, rambling in the side aisles of the dim 
abbey, some five and thirty years since, waking a new 
sense and putting a soul of old religion into my young 
apprehension — whether it be that, in which the psalm- 
ist, weary of the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to 
himself dove's wings — or that other, which, with a 
like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what 
means the young man shall best cleanse his mind — a 
holy calm pervadeth me, — I am for the time 

rapt above earth, 

And possess joys not promised at my birth. 17 

But when this master of the spell, not content to 
have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to 
inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, 
— impatient to overcome her " earthly " with his 
" heavenly," 18 — still pouring in, for protracted hours, 
fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from 
that inexhausted German ocean, above which, in tri- 

* I have been there, and still would go ; 

'T is like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. ' 



46 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

umphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions 19 
Haydn 20 and Mozart, 20 with their attendant tritons, 
Bach, 21 Beethoven, 20 and a countless tribe, whom to 
attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again 
in the deeps, — I stagger under the weight of harmony, 
reeling to and fro at my wit's end ; — clouds, as of 
frankincense, oppress me — priests, altars, censers, 
dazzle before me — the genius of his religion hath me 
in her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow 
of my friend, fate so naked, so ingenious — he is 
Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of 
dreams, a she-Pope too, — tri-coroneted like himself ! 
I am converted, and yet a Protestant ; — at once mal- 
leus hereticorum, 22 and myself grand heresiarch : or 
three heresies centre in my person : — I am Marcion, 23 
Ebion, 24 and Cerinthus 25 — Gog and Magog 26 — 
what not ? — till the coming in of the friendly supper- 
tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true 
Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows him- 
self no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities 
of a purer faith ; and restores to me the genuine 
unterrifying aspects of my pleasant-countenanced host 
and hostess. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors 
in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies 
(as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witch- 
craft. In the relations of this visible world we find 
them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect 
an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the 
invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the 
lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures 
of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion — 
of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable 
absurd — could they have to guide them in the rejec- 
tion or admission of any particular testimony ? — that 
maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen 
images consumed before a fire 1 — that corn was lodged, 
and cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic 
revelry the oaks of the forest — or that spits and ket- 
tles only danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some 
rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring — were 
all equally probable where no law of agency was under- 
stood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, 
passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, should 
lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent 
eld — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood a priori 
to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or 
standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may 
fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the wicked 
are expressly symbolised by a goat, 2 was it to be won- 
dered at so much, that he should come sometimes 



48 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

in that body, and assert his metaphor. — That the 
intercourse was opened at all between both worlds 
was perhaps the mistake — but that once assumed, I 
see no reason for disbelieving one attested story of this 
nature more than another on the score of absurdity. 
There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by 
which a dream may be criticised. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have 
existed in the days of received witchcraft; that I 
could not have slept in a village where one of those 
reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or 
more obtuse. Amidst the universal belief that these 
wretches were in league with the author of all evil, 
holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple 
Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled issuing, 
or silly Headborough 3 serving, a warrant upon them 
— as if they should subpoena Satan ! — Prospero 4 in 
his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers 
himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his 
enemies to an unknown island. He might have raised 
a storm or two, we think, on the passage. His acqui- 
escence is in exact analogy to the non-resistance of 
witches to the constituted powers. — What stops the 
Fiend in Spenser 5 from tearing Guy on to pieces — 
or who had made it a condition of his prey, that 
Guyon must take assay of the glorious bait — we 
have no guess. We do not know the laws of that 
country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive 
about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more 
legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I 
shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity 
originally into this channel. In my father's book- 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 49 

closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, 6 occu- 
pied a distinguished station. The pictures with which 
it abounds — one of the ark, in particular, and 
another of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the 
fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had 
been upon the spot — attracted my childish attention. 
There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up 
Samuel, 7 which I wish that I had never seen. We 
shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two 
huge tomes — and there was a pleasure in removing 
folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite strain- 
ing, was as much as I could manage, from the situation 
which they occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not 
met with the work from that time to this, but I 
remember it consisted of Old Testament stories, 
orderly set down, with the objection appended to each 
story, and the solution of the objection regularly 
tacked to that. The objection was a summary of what- 
ever difficulties had been opposed to the credibility of 
the history, by the shrewdness of ancient or modern 
infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary 
excess of candour. The solution was brief, modest, 
and satisfactory. The bane and antidote were both 
before you. To doubts so put, and so quashed, there 
seemed to be an end for ever. The dragon lay dead, 
for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. But — 
like as was rather feared than realised from that slain 
monster in Spenser — from the womb of those crushed 
errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the 
prowess of so tender a Saint George as myself to 
vanquish. 8 The habit of expecting objections to every 
passage, set me upon starting more objections, for the 
glory of finding a solution of my own for them. I be- 



50 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

came staggered and perplexed, a sceptic in long coats. 
The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard 
read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of 
impression, and were turned into so many historic or 
chronologic theses to be defended against whatever 
impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but — the 
next thing to that — I was to be quite sure that some 
one or other would or had disbelieved them. Next to 
making a child an infidel, is the letting him know 
that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man's 
weakness, but the child's strength. O, how ugly 
sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe 
and a suckling ! — I should have lost myself in these 
mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit 
sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate 
piece of ill-fortune, which about this time befel me. 
Turning over the picture of the ark with too much 
haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious 
fabric — driving my inconsiderate fingers right through 
the two larger quadrupeds — the elephant, and the 
camel — that stare (as well they might) out of the 
two last windows next the steerage in that unique 
piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was hence- 
forth locked up, and became an interdicted treasure. 
With the book, the objections and solutions gradually 
cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned 
since in any force to trouble me. — But there was one 
impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, 
which no lock or bar could shut out, and which was 
destined to try my childish nerves rather more seriously. 
— That detestable picture ! 

1 was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night- 
time solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The suffer- 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 51 

ings I endured in this nature would justify the ex- 
pression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I sup- 
pose, from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of 
my life — so far as memory serves in things so long 
ago — without an assurance, which realised its own 
prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old 
Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his 
picture of the Witch raising up Samuel — (O that 
old man covered with a mantle !) I owe — not 
my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy — but 
the- shape and manner of their visitation. It was he 
who dressed up for me a hag that nightly sate upon 
my pillow — a sure bed-fellow, when my aunt or my 
maid was far from me. All day long, while the book 
was permitted me, I dreamed waking over his deline- 
ation, and at night (if I may use so bold an expres- 
sion) awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I 
durst not, even in the daylight, once enter the chamber 
where I slept, without my face turned to the window, 
aversely from the bed where my witch-ridden pillow 
was. — Parents do not know what they do when they 
leave tender babes alone to go to sleep in the dark. 
The feeling about for a friendly arm — the hoping for 
a familiar voice — when they wake screaming — and 
find none to soothe them — what a terrible shaking it 
is to their poor nerves ! The keeping them up till 
midnight, through candle-light and the unwholesome 
hours, as they are called, — would, I am satisfied, in a 
medical point of view, prove the better caution. — 
That detestable picture, as I have said, gave the 
fashion to my dreams — if dreams they were — -for 
the scene of them was invariably the room in which 
I lay. Had I never met with the picture, the fears 



52 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

would have come self -pictured in some shape or other — 

Headless bear, black man, or ape 9 — 
but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — It 
is not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, 
which create these terrors in children. They can at 
most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H. 10 
who of all children has been brought up with the most 
scrupulous exclusion of every taint of superstition — 
who was never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, 
or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read or hear 
of any distressing story — finds all this world of fear, 
from which he has been so rigidly excluded ab extra, 
in his own "thick-coming fancies;" 11 and from his 
little midnight pillow, this nurse-child of optimism 
will start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats 
to which the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are 
tranquillity. 

Gorgons, 12 and Hydras, 13 and Chimseras 14 — dire 
stories of Celseno and the Harpies 15 — may reproduce 
themselves in the brain of superstition — but they were 
there before. They are transcripts, types — the arche- 
types are in us, and eternal. How else should the 
recital of that, which we know in a waking sense to be 
false, come to affect us at all? — or 

Names, whose sense we see not, 

Fray us with things that be not ? ie 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such 
objects, considered in their capacity of being able to 
inflict upon us bodily injury ? — O, least of all ! These 
terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body 
— or, without the body, they would have been the 
same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in 
Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, scorching 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 53 

demons — are they one half so fearful to the spirit of 
a man, as the simple idea of a spirit unembodied follow- 
ing him — 

Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread, 

And having once turn'd round, walks on, 

And turns no more his head ; 

Because he knows a frightful fiend 

Doth close behind him tread.* 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spirit- 
ual — that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless 
upon earth — that it predominates in the period of 
sinless infancy — are difficulties, the solution of which 
might afford some probable insight into our ante-mun- 
dane condition, and a peep at least into the shadow- 
land of pre-existence. 

My night-fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. 
I confess an occasional night-mare ; but I do not, as 
in early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, 
with the extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; 
but I know them for mockeries, even while I cannot 
elude their presence, and I fight and grapple with them. 
For the credit of my imagination, I am almost ashamed 
to say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. 
They are never romantic, seldom even rural. They 
are of architecture and of buildings — cities abroad, 
which I have never seen, and hardly have hope to see. I 
have traversed, for the seeming length of a natural day, 
Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their churches, 
palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, 
with an inexpressible sense of delight — a map-like 
distinctness of trace — and a daylight vividness of 
vision, that was all but being awake. — I have formerly 
* Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 



54 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

travelled among the Westmoreland fells 17 — my high- 
est Alps, — but they are objects too mighty for the 
grasp of my dreaming recognition ; and I have again 
and again awoke with ineffectual struggles of the inner 
eye, 18 to make out a shape in any way whatever, of 
Helvellyn. 19 Methought I was in that country, but 
the mountains were gone. The poverty of my dreams 
mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will can con- 
jure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, 
and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns, 

Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 20 

to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster 
a fiddle. Barry Cornwall 21 has his tritons and his 
nereids gambolling before him in nocturnal visions, and 
proclaiming sons born to Neptune — when my stretch 
of imaginative activity can hardly, in the night sea- 
son, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife. To set my fail- 
ures in somewhat a mortifying light — it was after 
reading the noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy 
ran strong upon these marine spectra ; and the poor 
plastic power, such as it is, within me set to work, to 
humour my folly in a sort of dream that very night. 
Methought I was upon the ocean billows at some sea 
nuptials, riding and mounted high, with the customary 
train sounding their conchs before me, (I myself, you 
may be sure, the leading god,) and jollily we went 
careering over the main, till just where Ino Luco- 
thea 22 should have greeted me (I think it was Ino) 
with a white embrace, the billows gradually subsiding, 
fell from a sea-roughness to a sea-calm, and thence to 
a river-motion, and that river (as happens in the fa- 
miliarisation of dreams) was no other than the gen- 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 55 

tie Thames, which landed me, in the wafture of a 
placid wave or two, alone, safe and inglorious, some- 
where at the foot of Lambeth palace. 23 

The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might 
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of po- 
etical faculty resident in the same soul waking. An 
old gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humourist, used 
to carry this notion so far, that when he saw any strip- 
ling of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, 
his first question would be, — " Young man, what sort 
of dreams have you ? " I have so much faith in my 
old friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein re- 
turning upon me, I presently subside into my proper 
element of prose, remembering those eluding nereids, 
and that inauspicious inland landing. 



VALENTINE'S DAY 

Hatl to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valen- 
tine ! * Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable 
Arch-flamen of Hymen ! 2 Immortal Go-between ! who 
and what manner of person art thou? Art thou but 
a name, typifying the restless principle which impels 
poor humans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou 
indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, 
thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves? Mysterious 
personage ! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other 
mitred father in the calendar ; not Jerome, 3 nor Am- 
brose, 3 nor Cyril ; 4 nor the consigner of undipt infants 
to eternal torments, Austin, 5 whom all mothers hate ; 
nor he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, 6 
nor Archbishop Parker, 6 nor Whitgift. 6 Thou comest 
attended with thousands and ten thousands of little 
Loves, and the air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. 7 
Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; 
and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne 
before thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those 
charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and 
intercross each other at every street and turning. The 
weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks be- 
neath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. 
It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral 
courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great 
enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, no 



VALENTINE'S DAY 57 

emblem is so common as the heart, — that little three- 
cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — the 
bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured 
into more allegories and affectations than an opera 
hat. What authority we have in history or mythology 
for placing the headquarters and metropolis of God 
Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, 
is not very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve 
as well as any other. Else we might easily imagine, 
upon some other system which might have prevailed 
for any thing which our pathology knows to the con- 
trary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect sim- 
plicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver and fortune are 
entirely at your disposal ; " or putting a delicate ques- 
tion, " Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow ? " But 
custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of 
sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortu- 
nate neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance. 
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban 
and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the 
door. It " gives a very echo to the throne where Hope 
is seated." 8 But its issues seldom answer to this oracle 
within. It is so seldom that just the person we want 
to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations the 
welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, 
or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven him- 
self was hoarse 9 that announced the fatal entrance of 
Duncan, so the knock of the postman on this day is 
light, airy, confident, and befitting one that bringeth 
good tidings. It is less mechanical than on other days ; 
you will say, " That is not the post I am sure," Visions 
of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful eternal 
common-places, which " having been will always be ; " 10 



58 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

which no school-boy nor school-man can write away; 
having your irreversible throne in the fancy and affec- 
tions — what are your transports, when the happy 
maiden, opening with careful finger, careful not to 
break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight of 
some well-designed allegory, some type, some youthful 
fancy, not without verses — 

Lovers all, 
A madrigal, 

or some such device, not over abundant in sense — 
young Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — some- 
thing between wind and water, a chorus where the 
sheep might almost join the shepherd, as they did, or 
as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 

All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not 
easily forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave 
to call you so) E. B. n — E. B. lived opposite a young 
maiden, whom he had often seen, unseen, from his par- 
lour window in C — e Street. She was all joyousness 
and innocence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving a 
Valentine, and just of a temper to bear the disappoint- 
ment of missing one with good humour. E. B. is an art- 
ist of no common powers ; in the fancy parts of design- 
ing, perhaps inferior to none ; his name is known at the 
bottom of many a well-executed vignette in the way of 
his profession, but no further ; for E. B. is modest, 
and the world meets nobody half-way. E. B. medi- 
tated how he could repay this young maiden for many 
a favour which she had done him unknown ; for when a 
kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and never 
knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it as an ob- 
ligation ; and E. B. did. This good artist set himself 
at work to please the damsel. It was just before Val- 



VALENTINE'S DAY 59 

entine's day three years since. He wrought, unseen and 
unsuspected, a wondrous work. We need not say it was 
on the finest gilt paper with borders — full, not of 
common hearts and heartless allegory, but all the pret- 
tiest stories of love from Ovid, and older poets than Ovid 
(for E. B. is a scholar). There was Pyramus and 
Thisbe, 12 and be sure Dido 13 was not forgot, nor Hero 
and Leander, 14 and swans more than sang in Cayster, 15 
with mottos and fanciful devices, such as beseemed, — a 
work in short of magic. Iris 16 dipt the woof. This on 
Valentine's eve he commended to the all-swallowing 
indiscriminate orifice — ( O ignoble trust ! ) — of the 
common post ; but the humble medium did its duty, 
and from his watchful stand, the next morning, he saw 
the cheerful messenger knock, and by and by the pre- 
cious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy 
girl unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, 
as one after one the pretty emblems unfolded them- 
selves. She danced about, not with light love, or fool- 
ish expectations, for she had no lover ; or, if she had, 
none she knew that could have created those bright 
images which delighted her. It was more like some 
fairy present ; a God-send, as our familiarly pious an- 
cestors termed a benefit received, where the benefactor 
was unknown. It would do her no harm. It would 
do her good for ever after. It is good to love the un- 
known. I only give this as a specimen of E. B. and 
his modest way of doing a concealed kindness. 

Good-morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; 17 
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish 
to all faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise 
old legends, but are content to rank themselves humble 
diocesans of old Bishop Valentine, and his true church. 



MY KELATIONS 

I am arrived at that point of life, at which a man 
may account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he 
have either of his parents surviving. I have not that 
felicity — and sometimes think feelingly of a passage 
in Browne's Christian Morals, 1 where he speaks of a 
man that hath lived sixty or seventy years in the 
world. " In such a compass of time," he says, " a 
man may have a close apprehension what it is to be 
forgotten, when he hath lived to find none who could 
remember his father, or scarcely the friends of his 
youth, and may sensibly see with what a face in no 
long time Oblivion will look upon himself." 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. 2 She was one 
whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She 
often used to say, that I was the only thing in it which 
she loved ; and, when she thought I was quitting it, 
she grieved over me with mother's tears. A partiality 
quite so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. 
She was from* morning till night poring over good 
books, and devotional exercises. Her favourite vol- 
umes were Thomas a Kempis, 3 in Stanhope's Transla- 
tion ; and a Roman Catholic Prayer Book, with the 
matins and complines regularly set down, — terms 
which I was at that time too young to understand. 
She persisted in reading them, although admonished 
daily concerning their Papistical tendency ; and went 
to church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should 
do. These were the only books she studied ; though, I 



MY RELATIONS 61, 

think, at one period of her life, she told me, she had 
read with great satisfaction the Adventures of an Un- 
fortunate Young Nobleman. Finding the door of the 
chapel in Essex Street 4 open one day — it was in the 
infancy of that heresy — she went in, liked the ser- 
mon, and the manner of worship, and frequented it at 
intervals for some time after. She came, not for doc- 
trinal points, and never missed them. With some lit- 
tle asperities in her constitution, which 1 have above 
hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and a 
fine old Christian. She was a woman of strong sense, 
and "a shrewd mind — extraordinary at a repartee; 
one of the few occasions of her breaking silence — 
else she did not much value wit. The only secular em- 
ployment I remember to have seen her engaged in, 
was, the splitting of French beans, and dropping them 
into a China basin of fair water. The odour of those 
tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my 
sense, redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly it 
is the most delicate of culinary operations. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — 
to remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to 
have been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never 
had any — to know them. 5 A sister, I think, that 
should have been Elizabeth, 6 died in both our infan- 
cies. What a comfort, or what a care, may I not 
have missed in her! — But I have cousins, sprinkled 
about in Hertfordshire — besides two, with whom I 
have been all my life in habits of the closest inti- 
macy, and whom I may term cousins par excellence. 
These are James and Bridget Elia. They are older 
than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither 
of them seems disposed, in matters of advice and 



62 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

guidance, to waive any of the prerogatives which pri- 
mogeniture confers. May they continue still in the 
same mind ; and when they shall be seventy-five, and 
seventy-three years old (I cannot spare them sooner), 
persist in treating me in my grand climacteric pre- 
cisely as a stripling, or younger brother ! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. 7 Nature hath her 
unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if 
we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, 8 
and of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire 
— those fine Shandian 9 lights and shades, which make 
up his story. I must limp after in my poor anti- 
thetical manner, as the fates have given me grace and 
talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common observer 
at least — seemeth made up of contradictory prin- 
ciples. — The genuine child of impulse, the frigid 
philosopher of prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's 
doctrine is invariably at war with his temperament, 
which is high sanguine. With always some fire-new 
project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent 
of innovation, and crier down of everything that has 
not stood the test of age and experiment. With a 
hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in 
his fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the 
romantic in others ; and, determined by his own sense 
in everything, commends you to the guidance of com- 
mon sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the 
eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only 
anxious that you should not commit yourself by doing 
anything absurd or singular. On my once letting slip 
at table, that I was not fond of a certain popular 
dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so — for 
the world would think me mad. He disguises a pas- 



MY RELA TIONS 63 

sionate fondness for works of high art (whereof he 
hath amassed a choice collection), under the pretext 
of buying only to sell again — that his enthusiasm 
may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were 
so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral Domeni- 
chino 10 hang still by his wall? — is the ball of his 
sight much more dear to him? — or what picture- 
dealer can talk like him ? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp 
their speculative conclusions to the bent of their indi- 
vidual humours, his theories are sure to be in diamet- 
rical opposition to his constitution. He is courageous 
as Charles of Sweden, 11 upon instinct ; chary of his 
person, upon principle, as a travelling Quaker. — He 
has been preaching up to me, all my life, the doctrine 
of bowing to the great — the necessity of forms, and 
manner, to a man's getting on in the world. He him- 
self never aims at either, that I can discover, — and 
has a spirit, that would stand upright in the presence 
of the Cham of Tartary. 13 It is pleasant to hear him 
discourse of patience — extolling it as the truest wis- 
dom — and to see him during the last seven minutes 
that his dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran 
up in her haste a more restless piece of workmanship 
than when she moulded this impetuous cousin — and 
Art never turned out a more elaborate orator than he 
can display himself to be, upon his favourite topic of 
the advantages of quiet, and contentedness in the 
state, whatever it be, that we are placed in. He is 
triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe in 
one of those short stages that ply for the western 
road, in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of 
John Murray's 13 street — where you get in when it is 



64 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath 
completed her just freight — a trying three-quarters of 
an hour to some people. He wonders at your fidgeti- 
ness, — " where could we be better than we are, thus 
sitting, thus consulting f" 14 — " prefers, for his part, 
a state of rest to locomotion," — with an eye all the 
while upon the coachman — till at length, waxing out 
of all patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into 
a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us 
so long over the time which he had professed, and de- 
clares peremptorily, that " the gentleman in the coach 
is determined to get out, if he does not drive on that 
instant." 

Yery quick at inventing an argument, or detecting 
a sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any 
chain of arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with 
logic ; and seems to jump at most admirable conclu- 
sions by some process, not at all akin to it. Conso- 
nantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, 
upon certain occasions, that there exists such a faculty 
at all in man as reason ; and wondereth how man came 
first to have a conceit of it — enforcing his negation with 
all the might of reasoning he is master of. He has 
some speculative notions against laughter, and will 
maintain that laughing is not natural to him — when 
peradventure the next moment his lungs shall crow 
like Chanticleer. He says some of the best things in 
the world — and declareth that wit is his aversion. It 
was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in 
their grounds — What a pity to think, that these fine 
ingenuous lads in a few years will all he changed 
into frivolous Members of Parliament! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in 



MY RELATIONS 65 

age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is 
that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet 
Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that 
inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his 
swing. — It does me good, as I walk towards the street 
of my daily avocation, on some fine May morning, to 
meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, with 
a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face, 
that indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude 15 — 
or a Hobbima 16 — for much of his enviable leisure is 
consumed at Christie's, 17 and Phillips's — or where not, 
to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions 
he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the 
advantages a person like me possesses above himself, 
in having his time occupied with business which he 
must do — assureth me that he often feels it hang 
heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — 
and goes off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune to 
Pall Mall 18 — perfectly convinced that he has con- 
vinced me — while I proceed in my opposite direction 
tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indiffer- 
ence doing the honours of his new purchase, when he 
has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light 
till he has found the best — placing it at this distance, 
and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight 
to his own. You mast spy at it through your fingers, 
to catch the aerial perspective — though you assure 
him that to you the landscape shows much more agree- 
able without that artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight, 
who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who 
should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring 
one of his anterior bargains to the present ! — The last 



66 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

is always his best hit — his " Cynthia of the minute." 19 
Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I known to 
come in — a Raphael ! 20 — keep its ascendency for a 
few brief moons — then, after certain intermedial de- 
gradations from the front drawing-room to the back 
gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — adopted in 
turn by each of the Carracci, 21 under successive lowering- 
ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall — con- 
signed to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a 
Lucca Giordano, 22 or plain Carlo Maratti ! 23 — which 
things when I beheld — musing upon the chances and 
mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect 
upon the altered condition of great personages, or 
that wof ul Queen of Richard the Second — 
set forth in pomp, 



She came adorned hither like sweet May. 
Sent back like Hollowmass or shortest day. 24 

With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited 
sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a 
world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what 
passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of 
your habits. He will tell an old established play-goer, 
that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the 
theatres), is a very lively comedian — as a piece of 
news ! He advertised me but the other day of some 
pleasant green lanes which he had found out for nie, 
knowing me to be a great walker, in my own immediate 
vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot any time 
these twenty years ! — He has not much respect for 
that class of feelings which goes by the name of senti- 
mental. He applies the definition of real evil to bod- 
ily suffering exclusively — and rejecteth all others as 
imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or the bare 



MY RELATIONS 67 

supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree which I 
have never witnessed out of womankind. A constitu- 
tional acuteness to this class of sufferings may in part 
account for this. The animal. tribe in particular he 
taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded 
or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. 
An over-loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the 
apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend 
of those who have none to care for them. The contem- 
plation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will 
wring him so, that " all for pity he could die." 25 It 
will take the savour from his palate, and the rest from 
his pillow, for days and nights. With the intense feel- 
ing of Thomas Clarkson, 26 he wanted only the steadi- 
ness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that " true 
yoke-fellow with Time," to have effected as much for 
the Animal, as he hath done for the Negro Crea- 
tion. But my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly 
formed for purposes which demand co-operation. He 
cannot wait. His amelioration-plans must be ripened 
in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivocal 
figure in benevolent societies, and combinations for the 
alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly 
makes him to outrun, and put out, his co-adjutors. He 
thinks of relieving, — while they think of debating. 
Pie was black-balled out of a society for the Relief 
of * * * * *, 27 because the fervour of his humanity 
toiled beyond the formal apprehension, and creeping 
processes, of his associates. I shall always consider 
this distinction as a patent of nobility in the Elia 
family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile 
at, or upbraid, jny unique cousin ? Marry, heaven, and 



68 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

all good manners, and the understanding that should 
be between kinsfolk, forbid ! — With all the strange- 
nesses of this strangest of the Elias — I would not 
have him in one jot or tittle other than he is ; neither 
would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman for the 
most exact, regular, and every-way consistent kinsman 
breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some 
account of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already 
surfeited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if 
you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which 
we made a summer or two since, in search of more 
cousins- — 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 28 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER 
TEMPLE 

I was born, 1 and passed the first seven years of my 
life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, 
its fountain, its river, I had almost said — for in those 
young years, what was this king of rivers to me but a 
stream that watered our pleasant places ? — these are 
my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses 
to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, 
than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot. 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide, 
Till they decayd through pride. 2 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. 
What a transition for a countryman visiting London 
for the first time — the pass'ing from the crowded 
Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into its 
magnificent ample squares, its classic green recesses! 
What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it, 
which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden ; 
that goodly pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 3 

confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, 
more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, 
with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place of my kindly 
engendure), right opposite the stately stream, which 



70 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade - 
polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her 
Twickenham Naiades ! 4 a man would give something 
to have been born in such places. What a collegiate 
aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, 5 where the foun- 
tain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how 
many times ! to the astoundment of the young urchins, 
my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess at its 
recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the 
wondrous work as magic ! What an antique air had 
the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral 
inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they 
measured, and to take their revelations of its flight 
immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with 
the fountain of light ! How would the dark line steal 
imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, 
eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as 
an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep ! 

Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 6 

What a dead thing, is a clock, with its ponderous 
embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn 
dulness of communication, compared with the simple 
altar-like structure, and silent heart language of the 
old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian gar- 
dens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its 
business use be superseded by more elaborate inven- 
tions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded 
for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of 
pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, 
and good-hours. It was the primitive clock, the horo- 
loge of the first world. Adam could scarce have 
missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 71 

for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds 
to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to 
pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd " carved 
it out quaintly in the sun ; " 7 and, turning philosopher 
by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more 
touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of 
the gardener, recorded by Mar veil, 8 who, in the days 
of artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and 
flowers. I must quote his verses a little higher up, 
for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a 
witty delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly, I 
hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-dials. He is speak- 
ing of sweet garden scenes : 

What wondrous life is this I lead ! 
Ripe apples drop about my head. 
The luscious clusters of the vine 
Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
The nectarine, and curious peach, 
Into my hands themselves do reach. 
Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 
Withdraws into its happiness. 
The mind, that ocean, where each kind 
Does straight its own resemblance find ; 
Yet it creates, transcending these, 
Far other worlds, and other seas; 
Annihilating all that 's made 
To a green thought in a green shade. 
Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 
Or at some fruit tree's mossy root, 
Casting the body's vest aside, 
My soul into the boughs does glide : 
There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 
Then whets and claps its silver wings ; 
And, till prepared for longer flight, 
Waves in its plumes the various light. 



72 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

How well the skilful gardener drew, 
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new ! 
Where, from above, the milder sun 
Does through a fragrant zodiac run : 
And, as it works, the industrious bee 
Computes its time as well as we. 
How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers ? * 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, 
or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that 
little green nook behind the South-Sea House, what 
a freshness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four little 
winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, 
spouting out ever fresh streams from their innocent- 
wanton lips, in the square of Lincoln's Inn, 9 when I 
was no bigger than they were figured. They are gone, 
and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell 
me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. 
Why not then gratify children, by letting them stand ? 
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are 
awakening images to them at least. Why must every- 
thing smack of man, and mannish ? Is the world all 
grown up ? Is childhood dead ? Or is there not in the 
bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's 
heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments? 
The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged 
living figures that still flitter and chatter about that 
area, less gothic in appearance ? or is the splutter of 
their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent 
as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs 
uttered? 

They have lately gothicised the entrance to the 
* From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 73 

Inner Temple-hall, and the library front, to assimi- 
late them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which 
they do not at all resemble. What is become of the 
winged horse 10 that stood over the former? a stately 
arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the Vir- 
tues, which Italianised the end of the Paper-build- 
ings ? — my first hint of allegory ! They must account 
to me for these things, which I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call 
the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the 
foofsteps which made its pavement awful! It is be- 
come common and profane. The old benchers had it 
almost sacred to themselves, in the fore part of the 
day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. 
Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide 
spaces betwixt you, when you passed them. We walk 
on even terms with their successors. The roguish eye 
of J — — -— JI, 11 ever ready to be delivered of a jest, 
almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. 
But what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas 
^ Coven try ? 12 — whose person was a quadrate, his step 
massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, 
his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible 
from his way as a moving column, the scarecrow of 
his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and superiors, 
who made a solitude of children wherever he came, 
for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would 
have shunned an Elisha bear. 13 His growl was as 
thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in 
mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, 
of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, 
aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke 
from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He 



74 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, div- 
ing for it under the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned 
waistcoat pocket ; his waistcoat red and angry, his 
coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by 
adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he 
paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; 
the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. 14 They were 
coevals, and had nothing but that and their bencher- 
ship in common. In politics Salt was a whig, and 
Coventry a staunch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did 
the latter cast out — for Coventry had a rough spinous 
humour — at the political confederates of his associate, 
which rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter 
like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle 
Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, 
and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice 
of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to 
much. When a case of difficult disposition of money, 
testamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordi- 
narily handed it over with a few instructions to his 
man Lovel, — who was a quick little fellow, and would 
despatch it out of hand by the light of natural 
understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. 
It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed 
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a 
child might pose him in a minute — indolent and pro- 
crastinating to the last degree. Yet men would give 
him credit for vast application in spite of himself. 
He was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. 
He never dressed for a dinner-party but he forgot 
his sword — they wore swords then — or some other 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 75 

necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye 
upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him 
his cue. If there was anything which he could speak 
unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to dine 
at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy 16 on the 
day of her execution ; — and L. who had a wary fore- 
sight of his probable hallucinations, before he set out, 
schooled him with great anxiety not in any possible 
manner to allude to her story that day. S. promised 
faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not been 
sgated in the parlour, where the company was expecting 
the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the 
conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of the win- 
dow, and pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary mo- 
tion with him— observed, "it was a gloomy day," and 
added, "Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, 
I suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. 
Yet S. was thought bj 7 " some of the greatest men of 
his time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in mat- 
ters pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary niceties 
and embarrassments of conduct — from force of manner 
entirely. He never laughed. He had the same good 
fortune among the female world, — was a known toast 
with the ladies, and one or two are said to have died 
for love of him — I suppose, because he never trifled 
or talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, 
hardly common attentions. He had a fine face and per- 
son, but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have 
shown them off with advantage to the women. His 

eye lacked lustre. Not so, thought Susan P ; 17 

who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold 
evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement 
of B d Row with tears that fell in drops which 



76 THE ESS A YS OF ELIA 

might be heard, because her friend had died that day 
— he whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion 
for the last forty years — a passion which years could 
not extinguish or abate ; nor the long resolved, yet 
gently enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelor- 
hood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan 

P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven. 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family 
of that name. He passed his youth in contracted cir- 
cumstances,' which gave him early those parsimonious 
habits which in after-life never forsook him ; so that, 
with one windfall or another, about the time I knew 
him he was master of four or five hundred thousand 
pounds ; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore 
less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump 
in Serjeant's Inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel, is do- 
ing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine 
not at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North 
Cray, 18 where he seldom spent above a day or two at 
a time in the summer ; but preferred, during the hot 
months, standing at his window in this damp, close, 
well-like mansion, to watch as he said, " the maids 
drawing water all day long." I suspect he had his 
within-door reasons for the preference. Hie currus et 
armafuere. 19 He might think his treasure more safe. 
His house had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a 
close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a 
miser, none of the mad Elwes 20 breed, who have brought 
discredit upon a character, which cannot exist without 
certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of pur- 
pose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I sus- 
pect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the pence, 
he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 77 

that leaves us careless generous fellows at an immea- 
surable distance behind. C. gave away .£30,000 at 
once in his life-time to a blind charity. His housekeep- 
ing was severely looked after, but he kept the table of 
a gentleman. He would know who came in and who 
went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney ,was 
never suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew 
what he was worth in the world ; and having but a 
competency for his rank, which his indolent habits 
were little calculated to improve, might have suffered 
severely if he had not had honest people about him. 
Lovel took care of everything. He was at once his 
clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his 
" flapper," 21 his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. 
He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in 
anything without expecting and fearing his admonish- 
ing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, 
had they not been the purest in the world. He re- 
signed his title almost to respect as a master, if L. 
could ever have forgotten for a moment that he was a 
servant. 

I knew this Lovel. 22 He was a man of an incorri- 
gible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and 
" would strike." 23 In the cause of the oppressed he 
never considered inequalities, or calculated the num- 
ber of his opponents. He once wrestled a sword out 
of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn upon 
him : and pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. 
The swordsman had offered insult to a female — an 
occasion upon which no odds against him could have 
prevented the interference of Lovel. He would stand 
next day bare-headed to the same person, modestly to 



78 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank, 
where something better was not concerned. L. was 
the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay 
as Grarrick's, 24 whom he was said greatly to resemble 
(I have a portrait of him which confirms it), possessed 
a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift 25 and 
Prior 26 — moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris 
to admiration, 27 by the dint of natural genius merely ; 
turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, 
to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with 
equal facility ; made punch better than any man of 
his degree in England ; had the merriest quips and 
conceits, and was altogether as brimful of rogueries 
and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother 
of the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, 
honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton 28 would have 
chosen to go a fishing with. I saw him in his old age 
and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the 
last sad stage of human weakness — " a remnant most 
forlorn of what he was," 29 — yet even then his eye 
would light up upon the mention of his favourite Gar- 
rick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes 30 — 
" was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole per- 
formance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, 
he would speak of his former life, and how he came 
up a little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how 
his mother cried at parting with him, and how he re- 
turned, after some few years' absence, in his smart new 
livery to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, 
and could hardly be brought to believe that it was 
" her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsid- 
ing, he would weep, till I have wished that sad second- 
childhood might have a mother still to lay its head 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 79 

upon her lap. But the common mother of us all in no 
long time after received him gently into hers. 

With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon 
the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson 31 would join, 
to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm- 
in-arm in those days — " as now our stout triumvirs 
sweep the streets," — but generally with both hands 
folded behind them for state, or with one at least be- 
hind, the other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, 
but not a prepossessing man. He had that in his face 
which you could not term unhappiness ; it rather im- 
plied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were 
colourless, even to whiteness. His look was uninvit- 
ing, resembling (but without his sourness) that of our 
great philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, 
but I could never make out what he was. Contempo- 
rary with these, but subordinate, was Dailies Barring- 
ton 32 — another oddity — he walked burly and square 
— in imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he at- 
tained not to the dignity of his prototype. Neverthe- 
less, he did pretty well, upon the strength of being a 
tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. 
When the account of his year's treasurership came 
to be audited, the following singular charge was unani- 
mously disallowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed 
Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to 
poison the sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was > 
old Barton 33 — a jolly negation, who took upon him the 
ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament cham- 
ber, where the benchers dine — answering to the com- 
bination rooms at college — much to the easement of 
his less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more 
of him. — Then Read, 34 and Twopenny 35 — Read, 



80 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

good-humoured and personable — Twopenny, good- 
humoured, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon his 
own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry 36 was attenuated > 
and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was 
rather of later date) and his singular gait, which was 
performed by three steps and a jump regularly suc- 
ceeding. The steps were little efforts, like that of a 
child beginning to walk ; the jump comparatively vig- 
orous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned this 
figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover. 
It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer 
the purpose any better than common walking. The 
extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect set him upon 
it. It was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often 
rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother 
Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features 
were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his 
cat's ears extremely, when anything had offended him. 
Jackson 37 — the omniscient Jackson he was called — 
was of this period.' He had the reputation of possess- 
ing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his 
time. He was the Friar Bacon 38 of the less literate 
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant pas- 
sage, of the cook applying to him, with much formal- 
ity of apology, for instructions how to write down 
edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. He was 
supposed to know, if any man in the world did. He 
decided the orthography to be — as I have given it 
— fortifying his authority with such anatomical rea- 
sons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned 
and happy. Some do spell it yet perversely, aitch bone, 
from a fanciful resemblance between its shape, and 
that of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 81 

forgotten Mingay 39 with the iron hand — but he was 
somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some 
accident, and supplied it with a grappling hook, which 
he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the 
substitute, before I was old enough to reason whether 
it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment 
it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud-talking 
person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas 
as an emblem of power — somewhat like the horns 
in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. 40 Baron 
Ma*seres, 41 who walks (or did till very lately) in the 
costume of the reign of George the Second, closes 
my imperfect recollections of the old benchers of the 
Inner Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the 
like of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? Ye 
inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why comes 
in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright 
or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so 
sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me — 
to my childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? 
In those days I saw Gods, as " old men covered with 
f a mantle," 42 walking upon the earth. Let the dreams 
of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies and 
fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, — in the heart 
of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well of 
innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of exag- 
geration will be busy there, and vital — from every- 
day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. 
In that little Goshen 43 there will be light, when 
the grown world flounders about in the darkness of 
sense and materiality. While childhood, and while 
dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination 



82 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the 
earth. 

P. S. I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect mem- 
ory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest 
I always thought that he had been a bachelor ! This 
gentleman, R. N. 44 informs me, married young, and 
losing his lady in child-bed, within the first year of 
their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects 
of which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In 
what a new light does this place his rejection (O call 
it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan P , unrav- 
elling into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy 
and retiring character ! — Henceforth let no one receive 
the narratives of Elia for true records ! They are, in 
truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not veri- 
ties — or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts 
of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., 
and would have done better perhaps to have consulted 
that gentleman, before he sent these incondite reminis- 
cences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer — who 
respects his old and his new masters — would but have 
been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The 
good man wots not, peradventure, of the license which 
Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, 
or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the Gentle- 
man's — his furthest monthly excursions in this nature 
having been long confined to the holy ground of honest 
Urban 's 45 obituary. May it be long before his own 
name shall help to swell those columns of unenvied 
flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New Benchers of the In- 
ner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the 



OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 83 

kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities over- 
take him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — 
make allowances for them, remembering that " ye your- 
selves are old." 46 So may the Winged Horse, your 
ancient badge and cognisance, still flourish ! so may fu- 
ture Hookers 47 and Seldens 48 illustrate your church 
and chambers ! So may the sparrows, in default of 
more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your 
walks ! so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery 
maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your 
stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as 
ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may 
the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your 
stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, 
with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies 
that solemnised the parade before ye! 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, 
its origin in the early times of the world, and the hun- 
ter-state of man, when dinners were precarious things, 
and a full meal was something more than a common 
blessing ; when a belly-full was a windfall, and looked 
like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal 
songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a 
lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally 
be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the mod- 
ern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why 
the blessing of food — the act of eating — should have 
had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to 
it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with 
which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of 
the many other various gifts and good things of existence. 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty 
other occasions in the course of the day besides my din- 
ner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, 
for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a 
solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spir- 
itual repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before 
Shakespeare — a devotional exercise proper to be said 
before reading the Fairy Queen ? 1 — but, the received 
ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary cere- 
mony of manducation, I shall confine my observations 
to the experience which I have had of the grace, properly 
so called ; commending my new scheme for extension 
to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and per- 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 85 

chance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my 
friend Homo Humanus, 2 for the use of a certain snug 
congregation of Utopian Rabelaesian Christians, 3 no 
matter where assembled. 

The form then of the benediction before eating has 
its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and 
unpro vocative repasts of children. It is here that the 
grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent 
man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal 
the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a pre- 
sent sense of the blessing which can be but feebly 
acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of 
wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme 
theory, have entered. The proper end of food — the 
animal sustenance — is barely contemplated by them. 
The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his 
bread for the day. Their courses are perennial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be pre- 
ceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to 
appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign consid- 
erations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, 
over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have 
leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of 
eating ; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, 
inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the pre- 
sence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a varus 
hospes*) 4 at rich men's tables, with the savoury soup 
and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening 
the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted 
choice, I have felt the introduction of that ceremony 
to be unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon 
you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious senti- 
ment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises 



86 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put 
out the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which 
rises round is pagan, and the belly-god intercepts it 
for his own. The very excess of the provision beyond 
the needs, takes away all sense of proportion between 
the end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. 
You are startled at the injustice of returning thanks 
— for what ? — for having too much, while so many 
starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. 5 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce con- 
sciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. 
I have seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of 
shame — a sense of the co-presence of circumstances 
which unhallow the blessing. After a devotional tone 
put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker 
will fall into his common voice, helping himself or his 
neighbour, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation 
of hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, 
or was not most conscientious in the discharge of the 
duty ; but he felt in his inmost mind the incompati- 
bility of the scene and the viands before him with the 
exercise of a calm and rational gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — r- Would you have Chris- 
tians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, 
without remembering the Giver? — no — I would have 
them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, 
and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, 
and they must pamper themselves with delicacies for 
which east and west are ransacked, I would have them 
postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when 
appetite is laid ; when the still small voice can be 
heard, and the reason of the grace returns — with 
temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 87 

surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. 
When Jeshurun 6 waxed fat, we read that he kicked. 
Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into 
the mouth of Celseno 7 any thing but a blessing. We 
may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some 
kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner 
and inferior gratitude : but the proper object of the 
grace is sustenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not del- 
icacies ; the means of life, and not the means of pam- 
pering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I 
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction 
at some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last 
concluding pious word — and that, in all probability, 
the sacred name which he preaches — is but the signal 
for so many impatient harpies to commence their foul 
orgies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which 
is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl ! It is well if 
the good man himself does not feel his devotions a 
little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling 
with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is 
the banquet which Satan, in the "Paradise Regained," 
provides for a temptation in the wilderness : — 

A table richly spread in regal mode, 
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained 
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 8 

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates 
would go down without the recommendatory preface 
of a benediction. They are like to be short graces 



88 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

where the devil plays the host. — I am afraid the poet 
wants his usual decorum in this place. Was he think- 
ing of the old Roman luxury, or of a gaudy day 9 at 
Cambridge ? This was a temptation fitter for a Helio- 
gabalus. 10 The whole banquet is too civic and culi- 
nary, and the accompaniments altogether a profanation 
of that deep, abstracted, holy scene. The mighty artil- 
lery of sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out 
of proportion to the simple wants and plain hunger of 
the guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from 
his dreams might have been taught better. To the tem- 
perate fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort 
of feasts presented themselves ? — He dreamed indeed, 

As appetite is wont to dream, 



Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats ? — 

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 

And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 

Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn 

Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought; 

He saw the prophet also how he fled 

Into the desert, and how there he slept 

Under a juniper; then how awaked 

He found his supper on the coals prepared, 

And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 

And ate the second time after repose, 

The strength whereof sufficed him forty days: 

Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, 

Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 11 

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these tem- 
perate dreams of the divine Hunger er. To which of 
these two visionary banquets, think you, would the 
introduction of what is called the grace have been 
most fitting and pertinent ? 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 89 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but prac- 
tically I own that (before meat especially) they seem 
to involve something awkward and unseasonable. Our 
appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs 
to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set 
about the great ends of preserving and continuing the 
species. They are fit blessings to be contemplated at 
a distance with a becoming gratitude : but the moment 
of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) 
is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The 
Quakers who go about their business, of every descrip- 
tion, with more calmness than we, have more title to 
the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always 
admired their silent grace, and the more because I 
have observed their applications to the meat and drink 
following to be less passionate and sensual than ours. 
They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a peo- 
ple. They eat, as a horse bolts his chopt hay, with 
indifference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They 
neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see a 
citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a 
surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not 
indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels 
of deer's flesh were not made to be received with dis- 
passionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, 
affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his 
taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from 
one who professes to like minced veal. There is a phy- 
siognomical character in the tastes for food. C — 12 

holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses 
apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is right. 
With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less 



90 THE ESSA YS OF ELI A 

and less relish daily for these innocuous cates. The 
whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. 
Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire 
gentle thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under 
culinary disappointments, as to come home at the din- 
ner hour, for instance, expecting some savoury mess, 
and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill 
melted — that commonest of kitchen failures — puts 
me beside my tenour. — The author of the " Rambler " 13 
used to make inarticulate animal noises over a fa- 
vourite food. Was this the music quite proper to be 
preceded by the grace ? or would the pious man have 
done better to postpone his devotions to a season when 
the blessing might be contemplated with less perturba- 
tion ? I quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would set 
my thin face against those excellent things, in their 
way, jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, how- 
ever laudable, have little in them of grace or graceful- 
ness, a man should be sure, before he ventures so to 
grace them, that while he is. pre tending his devotions 
otherwise, he is not secretly kissing his hand to some 
great fish — his Dagon u — with a special consecration 
of no ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces are 
the sweet preluding strains to the banquets of angels 
and children : to the roots and severer repasts of the 
Chartreuse ; 15 to the slender, but not slenderly acknow- 
ledged, refection of the poor and humble man : but at 
the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxuri- 
ous they become of dissonant mood, less timed and 
tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of 
those better befitting organs would be, which children 
hear tales of, at Hog's Norton. 16 We sit too long at 
our meals, or are too curious in the study of them, or 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 91 

too disordered in our application to them, or engross 
too great a portion of these good things (which should 
be common) to our share, to be able with any grace to 
say grace. To be thankful for what we grasp exceed- 
ing our proportion is to add hypocrisy to injustice. 
A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the per- 
formance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at 
most tables. In houses where the grace is as indispens- 
able as the napkin, who has not seen that never settled 
question arise, as to who shall say it ; while the good 
man of the house and the visitor clergyman, or some 
other guest belike of next authority from years or 
gravity, shall be bandying about the office between 
them as a matter of compliment, each of them not un- 
willing to shift the awkward burthen of an equivocal 
duty from his own shoulders ? 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist di- 
vines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune 
to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. 
Before the first cup was handed round, one of these 
reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due 
solemnity, whether he chose to say any thing. It 
seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up 
a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend 
brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon 
an explanation, with little less importance he made 
answer, that it was not a custom known in his church : 
in which courteous evasion the other acquiescing for 
good manners' sake, or in compliance with a weak 
brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived 
altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian 17 have 
painted two priests, of his religion, playing into each 
other's hands the compliment of performing or omit- 



92 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

i 

ting a sacrifice, — the hungry God meantime, doubtful 
of his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over 
the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going 
away in the end without his supper. 

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want 
reverence ; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the 
charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the 
epigrammatic conciseness with which that equivocal 
wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L., 18 when 
importuned for a grace, used to inquire, first slily 
leering down the table, " Is there no clergyman here ? " 
significantly adding, " Thank G — ." Nor do I think 
our old form at school quite pertinent, where we were 
used to preface our bald bread and cheese suppers with 
a preamble, connecting with that humble blessing a 
recognition of benefits the most awful and overwhelm- 
ing to the imagination which religion has to offer. Non 
tunc illis erat locus. 19 I remember we were put to it 
to reconcile the phrase " good creatures," upon which 
the blessing rested, with the fare set before us, wil- 
fully understanding that expression in a low and animal 
sense, — till some one recalled a legend, 20 which told 
how in the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospi- 
tallers were wont to have smoking joints of roast meat 
upon their nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, 
commiserating the decencies, rather than the palates, 
of the children, commuted our flesh for garments, and 
gave us — horresco ref evens 21 — trowsers instead of 
mutton. 22 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A KEVEEIE 

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, 
when they were children : to stretch their imagination 
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or 
grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit 
that my little ones crept about me the other evening 
to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived 
in a great house in Norfolk x (a hundred times bigger 
than that in which they and papa lived) which had 
been the scene — so at least it was generally believed 
in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents 
which they had lately become familiar with from the 
ballad of the Children in the Wood. 2 Certain it is 
that the whole story of the children and their cruel 
uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon 
the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story 
down to the Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person 
pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern inven- 
tion in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put 
out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called 
upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and 
how good their great-grandmother Field 3 was, how be- 
loved and respected by every body, though she was not 
indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the 
charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be 
said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by 
the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more 
fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere 
in the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it in a 



94 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the 
dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, 
which afterwards came to decay, 4 and was nearly pulled 
down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried 
away to the owner's other house, where they were set 
up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to 
carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the 
Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt 
drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, 
" that would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, 
when she came to die, 5 her funeral was attended by 
a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry 
too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to 
show their respect for her memory, because she had 
been such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed 
that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a 
great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice 
spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, 
graceful person their great-grandmother Field once 
was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best 
dancer — here Alice's little right foot played an in- 
voluntary movement, till upon my looking grave, it 
desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, 
till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed 
her down with pain ; but it could never bend her good 
spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still up- 
right, because she was so good and religious. Then I 
told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone 
chamber of the great lone house ; and how she believed 
that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at mid- 
night gliding up and down the great staircase near 
where she slept, but she said "those innocents would 
do her no harm ; " and how frightened I used to be, 



DREAM-CHILDREN : A REVERIE 95 

t 

though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, 
because I was never half so good or religious as she — 
and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded 
all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then 
I told how good she was to all her grand-children, 
having us to the great house in the holydays, where I 
in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in 
gazing upon the old busts of the Caesars, 6 that had 
been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads 
would seem to live again, or I be turned into marble 
with them ; how I never could be tired with roaming 
about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, 
with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and 
carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed 
out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, 
which I had almost to myself, unless when now and 
then a solitary gardening man would cross me — and 
how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, 
without my ever offering to pluck them, because they 
were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and 
because I had more pleasure in strolling about among 
the old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the firs, and 
picking up the red berries, and the fir apples, which 
were good for nothing but to look at — or in lying 
about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden 
smells around me — or basking in the orangery, till 
I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with 
the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth — 
or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the 
fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and 
there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the 
water in silent state, as if it mocked at their imperti- 
nent friskings, — I had more pleasure in these busy- 



96 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

idle diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits of 
children. Here John slily deposited back upon the 
plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by 
Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both 
seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as 
irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, 
I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved 
all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner she 

might be said to love their uncle, John L , 7 

because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and 
a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about 
in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount 
the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an 
imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him 
half over the county in a morning, and join the hun- 
ters when there were any out — and yet he loved the 
old great house and gardens too, but had too much 
spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries — 
and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave 
as he was handsome, to the admiration of every body, 
but of their great-grandmother Field most especially; 
and how he used to carry me upon his back when I 
was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit older 
than me — many a mile when I could not walk for pain ; 
— and how in after life he became lame-footed too, 
and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough 
for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remem- 
ber sufficiently how considerate he had been to me 
when I was lame-footed ; and how when he died, 
though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if 
he had died a great while ago, such a distance there 
is betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his death 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 97 

as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it 
haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not cry or 
take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would 
have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, 
and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I 
missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and 
wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with 
him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not 
have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, 
their poor uncle, must have been when the doctor took 
off his limb. Here the children fell a crying, and 
asked if their little mourning which they had on was 
not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed 
me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them 
some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I 
told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, some- 
times in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the 

fair Alice W n ; 8 and, as much as children could 

understand, I explained to them what coyness, and 
difficulty, and denial meant in maidens — when sud- 
denly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice 
looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-pre- 
sentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood 
there before me, or whose that bright hair was ; and while 
I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter 
to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at 
last but two mournful features were seen in the utter- 
most distance, which, without speech, strangely im- 
pressed upon me the effects of speech ; " We are not 
of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The 
children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing ; 
less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what 
might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores 



98 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

of Lethe 9 millions of ages before we have existence, 
and a name " — and immediately awaking, I found 
myself quietly seated in my bachelor armchair, where 
I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged 
by my side — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone 
for ever. 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 

In a Letter to B. F. Esq. at Sydney, New South Wales 

My dear F. — When I think how welcome the 
sight of a letter from the world where you were born 
must be to you in that strange one to which you have 
been transplanted, I feel some compunctious visitings 
at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to 
set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary 
world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. 
It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should 
ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to 
expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is 
like writing for posterity ; and reminds me of one of 
Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, 2 " Alcander to Strephon, 
in the shades." Cowley's Post-Angel 3 is no more 
than would be expedient in such an intercourse. One 
drops a packet at Lombard Street, and in twenty-four 
hours a friend in Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it 
came in ice. It is only like whispering through a long 
trumpet. But suppose a tube let down from the moon, 
with yourself at one end, and the man at the other ; 
it would be some balk to the spirit of conversation, if 
you knew that the dialogue exchanged with that inter- 
esting theosophist would take two or three revolutions 
of a higher luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I 
know, you may be some parasangs nigher that primi- 
tive idea — Plato's man 4 — than we in England here 
have the honour to reckon ourselves. 

Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics ; 

LOFG* 



100 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include 
all non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious in them- 
selves, but treated after my fashion, non-seriously. — 
And first, for news. In them, the most desirable 
circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. 
But what security can I have that what I now send 
you for truth shall not before you get it unaccountably 
turn into a lie ? For instance, our mutual friend P. is 
at this present writing — my Now — in good health, 
and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputation. You 
are glad to hear it. This is natural and friendly. But 
at this present reading — your Now — he may possibly 
be in the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in 
reason ought to abate something of your transport 
(£. e. at hearing he was well, &c), or at least con- 
siderably to modify it. I am going to the play this 
evening, to have a laugh with Munden. 5 — You have 
no theatre, I think you told me, in your land of 

d d realities. You naturally lick your lips, and 

envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and you 
will correct the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday 
morning with you, and 1823. This confusion of 
tenses, this grand solecism of two presents, is in a 
degree common to all postage. But if I sent you 
word to Bath or the Devises, that I was expecting the 
aforesaid treat this evening, though at the moment 
you received the intelligence my full feast of fun 
would be over, yet there would be for a day or two 
after, as you would well know, a smack, a relish left 
upon my mental palate, which would give rational 
encouragement for you to foster a portion at least of 
the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my in- 
tention to produce. But ten months hence your envy 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 101 

or your sympathy would be as useless as a passion 
spent upon the dead. Not only does truth, in these 
long intervals, unessence herself, but (what is harder) 
one cannot venture a crude fiction for the fear that it 
may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What a 
wild improbable banter 1 put upon you some three 

years since of Will Weatherall having married a 

servant-maid ! I remember gravely consulting you 
how we were to receive her — for Will's wife was in 
no. case to be rejected ; and your no less serious re- 
plication in the matter ; how tenderly you advised an 
abstemious introduction of literary topics before the 
lady, with a caution not to be too forward in bringing 
on the carpet matters more within the sphere of her 
intelligence ; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise 
suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and 
mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects ; 
whether the conscious avoiding of all such matters in 
discourse would not have a worse look than the tak- 
ing of them casually in our way ; in what manner we 
should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. Wil- 
liam Weatherall being by ; whether we show more deli- 
cacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will's wife, 
by treating Becky with our customary chiding before 
her, or by an unusual deferential civility paid to 
Becky as to a person of great worth, but thrown by 
the caprice of fate into a humble station. There were 
difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you did 
me the favour to state with the precision of a lawyer, 
united to the tenderness of a friend. I laughed in 
my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when lo ! while 
I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon you in 
New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous pos- 



102 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

sibly of any lie-children not his own, or working after 
my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three 
days since) to the commission of a matrimony which 
I had only conjured up for your diversion. William 
Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to 
take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that 
news from me must become history to you ; which I 
neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for 
reading. No person, under a diviner, can with any 
prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such 
an arm's length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus 
interchange intelligence with effect ; the epoch of the 
writer (Habakkuk) falling in with the true present 
time of the receiver (Daniel) ; but then we are no 
prophets. 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with 
that. This kind of dish, above all, requires to be 
served up hot ; or sent off in water-plates, that your 
friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If it 
have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold 
meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the late 
Lord C 6 It seems that travelling somewhere about 
Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or nook, 
where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically 
and invitingly over a stream — was it ? — or a rock ? 
— no matter — but the stillness and the repose, after 
a weary journey 't is likely, in a languid moment of his 
lordship's hot restless life, so took his fancy, that he 
could imagine no place so proper, in the event of his 
death, to lay his bones in. This was all very natural 
and excusable as a sentiment, and shows his character 
in a very pleasing light. But when from a passing sen- 
timent it came to be an act ; and when by a positive 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 103 

testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried 
all that way from England ; who was there, some des- 
perate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the 
question, Why could not his lordship have found a 
spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green 
and pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his pur- 
pose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon ? Conceive the 
sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom 
House (startling the tide-waiters with the novelty), 
hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and 
handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians — 
a thing of its delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting 
it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. Sup- 
pose it in material danger (mariners have some super- 
stition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a 
fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint 
Gothard, 7 save us from a quietus so foreign to the 
deviser's purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy 
consummation. Trace it then to its lucky landing — 
at Lyons shall we say ? — I have not the map before 
me — jostled upon four men's shoulders — baiting at 
this town — stopping to refresh at t'other village — 
waiting a passport here, a license there ; the sanction 
of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence of 
the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length it arrives 
at his destination, tired out and jaded from a brisk 
sentiment into a feature of silly pride or senseless 
affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am 
afraid we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite 
sea-worthy. 

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though 
contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula 
which should irradiate a right friendly epistle — your 



104 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

puns and small jests are, I apprehend, extremely cir- 
cumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so far 
from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond 
sea, they will scarce endure to be transported by hand 
from this room to the next. Their vigour is as the 
instant of their birth. The nutriment for their brief 
existence is the intellectual atmosphere of the by-stand- 
ers : or this last, is the fine slime of Nilus - — the me- 
lior lutus* — whose maternal recipiency is as neces- 
sary as the sol pater to their equivocal generation. A 
pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack 
with it ; you can no more transmit it in its pristine 
flavour, than you can send a kiss. — Have you not tried 
in some instances to palm off* a yesterday's pun upon 
a gentleman, and has it answered ? Not but it was new 
to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new from 
you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up at a 
village ale-house a two-days-old newspaper. You have 
not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as an 
affront. This sort of merchandise above all requires a 
quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must 
be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, 
the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and 
the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's 
face as from a mirror. Who would consult his sweet 
visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three 
minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear F.) 
in giving back its copy ? 

I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. When 
I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island 9 comes across 
me. Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. 
I see Diogenes 10 prying among you with his perpetual 
fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 105 

time to give for the sight of an honest man ! You must 
almost have forgotten how we look. And tell me, what 
your Sydneyites do? are they th**v*ng all day long ? 
Merciful heaven ! what property can stand against such 
a depredation ! The kangaroos — your Aborigines — 
do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe- 
tainted, with those little short forepuds, looking like 
a lesson framed by nature to the pick-pocket ! Marry, 
for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a 
priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they 
would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the ex- 
pertest loco-motor in the colony. — We hear the most 
improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that 
the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, 
which spoils their scanning ? — It must look very odd ; 
but use reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to be 
regretted, for if they take it into their heads to be poets, 
it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of them, 
vile plagiarists. — Is there much difference to see to 
between the son of a th**f, and the grandson ? or 
where does the taint stop ? Do you bleach u in three 
or in four generations ? — I have many questions to 
put, but ten Delphic voyages 12 can be made in a shorter 
time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. — Do you 
grow your own hemp ? — What is your staple trade, 
exclusive of the national profession, I mean ? Your 
lock-smiths, I take it, are some of your great capi- 
talists. 

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when 
we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old con- 
tiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare Court 13 in the 
Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet corner ? — 
Why did I ? — with its complement of four poor elms, 



106 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

from "whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting 
ruralists, I picked my first lady-birds ! My heart is as 
dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty Au- 
gust, when I revert to the space that is between us ; a 
length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases 
of our English letters before they can reach you. But 
while I talk, I think you hear me, — thoughts dallying 
with vain surmise — 

Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away. 14 

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, 
so as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget 
walks on crutches. Grirls whom you left children have 
become sage matrons, while you are tarrying there. 

The blooming Miss W r 15 (you remember Sally 

W r) called upon us yesterday, an aged crone. 

Folks whom you knew die off every year. Formerly, 
I thought that death was wearing out, — I stood ram- 
parted about with so many healthy friends. The de- 
parture of J. W., 16 two springs back corrected my 
delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. 
If you do not make haste to return, there will be little 
left to greet you, of me, or mine. 



THE PEAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEKS 

I like to meet a sweep — understand me — not a 
grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no 
means attractive — but one of those tender novices, 
blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal 
washings not quite effaced from the cheek — such as 
come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with 
their little professional notes sounding like the peep 
peep of a young sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark 
should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not 
seldom anticipating the sun-rise ? 

I have a kindly yearning toward these dim specks 

— poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth 

— these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth with- 
out assumption ; and from their little pulpits (the tops 
of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morn- 
ing, preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to 
witness their operation! to see a chit no bigger than 
one's-self enter, one knew not by what process, into 
what seemed the fauces Averni 1 — to pursue him in 
imagination, as he went sounding on through so many 
dark stifling caverns, horrid shades ! — to shudder 
with the idea that " now, surely, he must be lost for 
ever ! " — to revive at hearing his feeble shout of dis- 
covered day-light — and then (O fulness of delight) 
running out of doors, to come just in time to see the 
sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished 



108 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over 
a conquered citadel ! I seem to remember having been 
told, that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with 
his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was 
an awful spectacle certainly ; not much unlike the old 
stage direction in Macbeth, where the " Apparition 
of a child crowned with a tree in his hand rises." 2 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry 
in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. 
It is better to give him two-pence. If it be starving 
weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occu- 
pation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompani- 
ment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will 
surely rise to a tester. 

There is a composition, the ground-work of which I 
have understood to be the sweet wood 'yctept; sassafras. 
This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered 
with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes 
a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know not how 
thy palate may relish it ; for myself, with every defer- 
ence to the judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of 
mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers in Lon- 
don) for the vending of this " wholesome and pleasant 
beverage," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou 
approachest Bridge Street — the only Salopian house* 
— I have never yet ventured to dip my own particular 
lip in a basin of his commended ingredients — a cau- 
tious premonition to the olfactories constantly whisper- 
ing to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due 
courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise 
not uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup it up with 
avidity. 

I know not by what particular conformation of the 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 109 

organ it happens, but I have always found that this 
composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of 
a young chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles 
(sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and 
soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes 
found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the 
mouth in these unfledged practitioners ; or whether Na- 
ture, sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter 
wood in the lot of these raw victims, caused to grow 
out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive — 
buf; so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the senses 
of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate ex- 
citement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, 
they will yet hang their black heads over the ascend- 
ing steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly 
no less pleased than those domestic animals — cats — 
when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. 
There is something more in these sympathies than 
philosophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, 
that his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known 
to thee, reader — if thou art one who keepest what 
are called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the 
fact — he hath a race of industrious imitators, who 
from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same 
savoury mess to humbler customers, at that dead time 
of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reel- 
ing home from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed 
artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature labours 
of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest dis- 
concerting of the former, for the honours of the pave- 
ment. It is the time when, in summer, between the 
expired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the 



110 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least sat- 
isfactory odours. The rake, who wisheth to dissipate 
his o'er-night vapours in more grateful coffee, curses 
the ungenial fume, as he passeth ; but the artisan stops 
to taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 

This is Saloop — the precocious herb-woman's dar- 
ling — the delight of the early gardener, who trans- 
ports his smoking cabbages by break of day from 
Hammersmith to Covent Garden's famed piazzas — 
the delight, and, oh 1 fear, too often the envy, of the 
unpennied sweep. Him shouldest thou haply encoun- 
ter, with his dim visage pendent over the grateful 
steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will 
cost thee but three half -pennies) and a slice of deli- 
cate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) — so may 
thy culinary fires, eased of the o'er-charged secretions 
from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter 
volume to the welkin — so may the descending soot 
never taint thy costly well-ingredienced soups — nor 
the odious cry, quick-reaching from street to street, 
of the fired chimney, invite the rattling engines from 
ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual scintil- 
lation thy peace and pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street 
affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the 
low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, 
or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I en- 
dure the jocularity of a young sweep with something 
more than forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, 
pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed precipi- 
tation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide 
brought me upon my back in an instant. I scram- 
bled up with pain and shame enough — yet outwardly 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 111 

trying to face it down, as if nothing had happened — 
when the rognish grin of one of these young wits 
encountered me. There he stood, pointing me out 
with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor wo-i 
man (I suppose his mother) in particular, till the 
tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought 
it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor 
red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and 
soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a 

jqy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth 4 

but Hogarth has got him already (how could he miss 
him ?) in the March to Finchley, grinning at the pie- 
man there he stood, as he stands in the picture, 

irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever — with 
such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, 
in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath 
absolutely no malice in it — that I could have been 
content, if the honour of a gentleman might endure it, 
to have remained his butt and his mockery till mid- 
night, s, 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of 
what are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy 
lips (the ladies must pardon me) is a casket, pre- 
sumably holding such jewels ; but, methinks, they 
should take leave to " air " them as frugally as pos- 
sible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show me 
their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess, that 
from the mouth of a true sweep a display (even to 
ostentation) of those white and shining ossifications, 
strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in manners, and 
an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 5 



112 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; 
a badge of better days ; a hint of nobility : — and, 
doubtless, under the obscuring darkness and double 
night of their forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurk- 
eth good blood, and gentle conditions, derived from 
lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The premature 
apprenticements of these tender victims give but too 
much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine, and al- 
most infantile abductions ; the seeds of civility and 
true courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts 
(not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint at 
some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels 6 mourn- 
ing for their children, even in our days, countenance 
the fact ; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a 
lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young Mon- 
tagu 7 be but a solitary instance of good fortune, out 
of many irreparable and hopeless defoliations. 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, 8 a few 
years since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of 
the Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly 
for its beds, in which the late duke was especially a 
connoisseur) — encircled with curtains of delicatest 
crimson, with starry coronets interwoven — folded be- 
tween a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap 
where Venus lulled Ascanius 9 — was discovered by 
chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon- 
day, fast asleep, a lost chimney sweeper. The little 
creature, having somehow confounded his passage among 
the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some un- 
known aperture had alighted upon this magnificent 
chamber ; and, tired with his tedious explorations, was 
unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, 
which he there saw exhibited ; so, creeping between 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 113 

the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the 
pillow, and slept like a young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the 
Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to perceive a 
confirmation of what I have just hinted at in this story. 
A high instinct was at work in the case, or I am mis- 
taken. Is it probable that a poor child of that de- 
scription, with whatever weariness he might be visited, 
would have ventured, under such a penalty, as he would 
be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a Duke's 
bed, and deliberately to lay himself down between 
them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an obvi- 
ous conch, still far above his pretensions — is this 
probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, 
which I contend for, had not been manifested within 
him, prompting to the adventure ? Doubtless this 
young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me that 
he must be) was allured by some memory, not amount- 
ing to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, 
when he was used to be-lapt by his mother, or his 
nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, into which 
he was but now creeping back as into his proper incu- 
nabula™ and resting-place. — By no other theory, than 
by this sentiment of a preexistent state (as I may 
call it), can I explain a deed so venturous, and, in- 
deed, upon any other system, so indecorous, in this 
tender, but unseasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White n was so impressed 
with a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently 
taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs 
of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted an 
annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his 
pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a 



114 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the yearly 
return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. 12 Cards were 
issued a week before to the master-sweeps in and about 
the metropolis, confining the invitation to their younger 
fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get in 
among us, and be good-naturedly winked at ; but our 
main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, 
indeed, who relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded 
himself into our party, but by tokens was providen- 
tially discovered in time to be no chimney-sweeper (all 
is not soot which looks so), was quoited out of the 
presence with universal indignation, as not having on 
the wedding garment ; but in general the greatest 
harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a conven- 
ient spot among the pens, at the north side of the 
fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the agree- 
able hubbub of that vanity ; but remote enough not 
to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping spec- 
tator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In 
those little temporary parlours three tables were spread 
with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every 
board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hiss- 
ing sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues di- 
lated at the savour. James White, as head waiter, 
had charge of the first table ; and myself, with our 
trusty companion Bigod, 13 ordinarily ministered to the 
other two. There was clambering and jostling, you 
may be sure, who should get at the first table — for 
Rochester 14 in his maddest days could not have done 
the humours of the scene with more spirit than my 
friend. After some general expression of thanks for 
the honour the company had done him, his inaugural 
ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old dame 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 115 

Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood frying 
and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing " the gentle- 
man," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender sa- 
lute, whereat the universal host would set up a shout 
that tore the concave, 15 while hundreds of grinning 
teeth startled the night with their brightness. O it 
was a pleasure to see the sable younkers lick in the 
unctuous meat, with his more unctuous sayings — how 
he would fit the tit-bits to the puny mouths, reserving 
the lengthier links for the seniors — how he would in- 
tercept a morsel even in the jaws of some young des- 
perado, declaring it " must to the pan again to be 
browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating " 

— how he would recommend this slice of white bread, 
or that piece of kissing -crust, to a tender juvenile, 
advising them all to have a care of cracking their 
teeth, which were their best patrimony — how gen- 
teelly he would deal about the small ale, as if it were 
wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were 
not good he should lose their custom ; with a special 
recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. Then 
we had our toasts — " The King," — the " Cloth," 

— which, whether they understood or not, was equally 
diverting and flattering ; — and for a crowning senti- 
ment, which never failed, " May the Brush supersede 
the Laurel." All these, and fifty other fancies, which 
were rather felt than comprehended by his guests, 
would he utter, standing upon tables, and prefacing 
every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give me leave to 
propose so and so," which was a prodigious comfort 
to those young orphans ; every now and then stuffing 
into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish on 
these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reek- 



116 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

ing sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was 
the savouriest part, you may believe, of the entertain- 
ment. 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — le 

James White is extinct, and with him these sup- 
pers have long ceased. He carried away with him half 
the fun of the world when he died — of my world 
at least. His old clients look for him among the pens ; 
and, missing him, reproach the altered feast of St. 
Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield departed 
for ever. 17 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my 
friend M. 1 was obliging enough to read and explain to 
me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat 
raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just 
as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not 
obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius 2 in the 
second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he 
designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, 
literally the Cook's holiday. The manuscript goes on 
to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which 
I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discov- 
ered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, 
having gone out into the woods one morning, as his man- 
ner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in 
the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, 
who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his 
age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle 
of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagra- 
tion over every part of their poor mansion, till it was 
reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry 
antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), 
what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new- 
farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. 
China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the 
East from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo 
was in utmost consternation, as you may think, not so 
much for the sake of the tenement, which his father 
and he could easily build up again with a few dry 



118 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any 
time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was think- 
ing what he should say to his father, and wringing his 
hands over the smoking remnants of one of those un- 
timely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike 
any scent which he had before experienced. What 
could it proceed from ? — riot from the burnt cottage 
— he had smelt that smell before — indeed this was by 
no means the first accident of the kind which had oc- 
curred through the negligence of this unlucky young 
fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any 
known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moisten- 
ing at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He 
knew not what to think. He next stooped down to 
feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He 
burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in 
his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs 
of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, 
and for the first time in his life (in the world's life in- 
deed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted 
— crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. 
It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his 
fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke 
into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that 
smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; and, sur- 
rendering himself up to the newborn pleasure, he fell 
to tearing up whole handf uls of the scorched skin with 
the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat 
in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the 
smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and 
finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon 
the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, 
which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 119 

flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his 
lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any 
inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. 
His father might lay on, but he could not beat him 
from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, 
becoming a little more sensible of his situation, some- 
thing like the following dialogue ensued. 

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me 
dpwn three houses with your dog's tricks, and be 
hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I 
know not what — what have you got there, I say? " 

" O, father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how 
nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
, his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should be- 
get a son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rend- 
ing it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force 
into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out " Eat, eat, 
eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O Lord," — 
with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the 
while as if he would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
put his son to death for an unnatural young mon- 
ster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it 
had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to 
them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, 
make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, 
proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclu- 
sion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both 



120 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never 
left off till they had despatched all that remained of 
the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stoned 
them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could 
think of improving upon the good meat which God 
had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got 
about. It was observed that Ho-ti' s cottage was burnt 
down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but 
fires from this time forward. Some would break out 
in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as 
the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to 
be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more 
remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to 
grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length 
they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, 
and father and son summoned to take their trial at 
Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence 
was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, 
and verdict about to be pronounced, when the fore- 
man of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of 
which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into 
the box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and 
burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done 
before them, and nature prompting to each of them 
the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and 
the clearest charge which judge had ever given, — to 
the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, 
reporters, and all present — without leaving the box, 
or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought 
in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 121 

manifest iniquity of the decision ; and, when the 
court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all 
the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a 
few days his Lordship's town house was observed to 
be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was 
nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel 
and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. 
The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. Peo- 
ple built slighter and slighter every day, until it was 
foared that the very science of architecture would in 
no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom 
of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says 
my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, 3 who 
made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of 
any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they 
called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole 
house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of 
a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a 
century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By 
such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the 
most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, 
make their way among mankind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pre- 
text for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses 
on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in 
favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse 
might be found in ROAST pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilisf 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
obsoniorum. 5 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork — those hobbydehoys — but a young and 



122 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet 
of the sty — with no original speck of the amor immun- 
diticef the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet 
manifest — his voice as yet not broken, but something 
between a childish treble, and a grumble — the mild 
forerunner, or jprodudium, of a grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a 
sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to 
that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, 
crackling, as it is well called — the very teeth are 
invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet 
in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance — with the 
adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat — but an inde- 
finable sweetness growing up to it — the tender blos- 
soming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the 
shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quint- 
essence of the child-pig's yet pure food the lean, no 

lean, but a kind of animal manna — or, rather, fat and 
lean, (if it must be so) so blended and running into 
each other, that both together make but one ambrosian 
result, or common substance. 

Behold him, while he is doing — it seemeth rather a 
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is 
so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the 
string! — Now he is just done. To see the extreme 
sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept out his 
pretty eyes --— radiant jellies — shooting stars — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 
lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up 
to the grossness and indocility which too often accom- 
pany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 123 

proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable 
animal — wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation 
— from these sins he is happily snatched away — 

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — 7 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while 
his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coal- 
heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair 
sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epi- 
cure — and for such a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She 
is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not 
sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-con- 
scienced person would do well to pause — too ravishing 
for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips 
that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — 
she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness 
and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the 
palate — she meddleth not with the appetite — and the 
coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a 
mutton chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provo- 
cative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the 
criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man 
may batten on him, and weakling refuseth not his 
mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to 
be unravelled without hazard, he is — good throughout. 
No part of him is better or worse than another. He 
helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. 
He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neigh- 
bours' fare. 



124 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly im- 
part a share of the good things of this life which fall 
to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. 
I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's 
pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in 
mine own. " Presents," I often say, " endear Absents." 
Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens 
(those " tame villatic fowl "), 8 capons, plovers, brawn, 
barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive 
them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue 
of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. 
One would not, like Lear, " give everything." 9 I make 
my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to 
the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or 
send out of the house, slightingly (under pretext of 
friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particu- 
larly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual 
palate — It argues an insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at 
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me 
at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, 
or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me 
one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the 
oven. In my way to school (it was over London 
Bridge) 10 a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I 
have no doubt at this time of day that he was a coun- 
terfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in 
the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of 
charity, school-boy like, I made him a present of — 
the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as 
one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self- 
satisfaction ; but before I had got to the end of the 
bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 125 

tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good 
aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, 
that I had never seen before, and who might be a 
bad man for aught I knew ; and then I thought of the 
pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I 
— I myself, and not another — would eat her nice 
cake — and what should I say to her the next time I 
saw her — how naughty I was to part with her pretty 
present - — and the odour of that spicy cake came back 
upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity 
T had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when 
she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she 
would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my 
mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit 
of alms-giving, and out-of -place hypocrisy of goodness, 
and above all I wished never to see the face again of 
that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 
ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to 
death with something of a shock, as we hear of any 
other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone 
by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophi- 
cal light merely) what effect this process might have 
towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, natu- 
rally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. 
It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cau- 
tious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we cen- 
sure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a 
gusto — 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students, when I was at St. Omer's, 11 and maintained 
with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 
" Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who 



126 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

obtained his death by whipping (per flagellatlonem 
extrem,arri) 12 superadded a pleasure upon the palate 
of a man more intense than any possible suffering we 
can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using 
that method of putting the animal to death ? " I forget 
the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and 
a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I 
beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your 
whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff 
them out with plantations of the rank and guilty gar- 
lic ; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger 
than they are — but consider, he is a weakling — a 
flower. 



BLAKESMOOR 1 IN H SHIRE 

I do not know a pleasure more affecting than to range 
at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old 
family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit 
of a better passion than envy : and contemplations on 
the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to 
Rave been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, in- 
compatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and 
vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same dif- 
ference of feeling, I think, attends us between enter- 
ing an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it 
is chance but some present human frailty — an act of 
inattention on the part of some of the auditory — or a 
trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory, on that of the 
preacher — puts us by our best thoughts, disharmon- 
ising the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou 
know the beauty of holiness ? — go alone on some 
week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, 
traverse the cool aisles of some country church : think 
of the piety that has kneeled there — the congregations, 
old and young, that have found consolation there — 
the meek pastor — the docile parishioner. With no 
disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, 
drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself 
become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies 
that kneel and weep around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist go- 
ing some few miles out of my road to look upon the 
remains of an old great house with which I had been 
impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprised that 



128 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

the owner of it had lately pulled it down ; still I had 
a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that 
so much solidity with magnificence could not have been 
crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish 
which I found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand 
indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced 
it to — an antiquity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. 
Where had stood the great gates ? What bounded the 
courtyard? Whereabout did the out-houses commence? 
a few bricks only lay as representatives of that which 
was so stately and so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this 
rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their 
proportion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their 
process of destruction, at the plucking of every pan- 
nel I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I 
should have cried out to them to spare a plank at 
least out of the cheerful store-room, in whose hot 
window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, 2 with 
the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of 
that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me 
— it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns ; 
or a pannel of the yellow room. 

Why, every plank and pannel of that house for me 
had magic in it. The tapestried bed-rooms — tapestry 
so much better than painting — not adorning merely, 
but peopling the wainscots — at which childhood ever 
and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (re- 
placed as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a 
momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright vis- 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 129 

ages, staring reciprocally — all Ovid 3 on the walls, in 
colours vivider than his descriptions. Actseon 4 in mid 
sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and 
the still more provoking and almost culinary coolness 
of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of 
Marsyas. 5 

Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Bat- 
tle died — whereinto I have crept, but always in the 
day time, with a passion of fear ; and a sneaking curi- 
osity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the 
past. — How shall they build it up again f 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long de- 
serted but that traces of the splendour of past in- 
mates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture was 
still standing — even to the tarnished gilt leather bat- 
tledores, and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in 
the nursery, which told that children had once played 
there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at 
will of every apartment, knew every nook and corner, 
wondered and worshipped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother 
of thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and 
admiration. So strange a passion for the place pos- 
sessed me in those years, that, though there lay — I 
shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion 
— half hid by trees, what I judged some romantic 
lake, such was the spell which bound me to the house, 
and such my carefulness not to pass its strict and 
proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored 
for me ; and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing 
over elder devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a 
pretty brawling brook had been the Lacus Incognitus 
of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive prospects 



130 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

— and those at no great distance from the house — I 

was told of such — what were they to me, being out of 

the boundaries of my Eden ? — So far from a wish to 

roam, I would have drawn, methought, still closer the 

fences of my chosen prison ; and have been hemmed 

in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding garden 

walls. I could have exclaimed with that garden-loving 

poet — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your, twines; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines; 
And oh so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
Ere I your silken bondage break, 
Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briars, nail me through. 6 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides — 
the low-built roof — parlours ten feet by ten — frugal 
boards, and all the homeliness of home — these were 
the condition of my birth — the wholesome soil which 
I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their 
tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of 
something beyond ; and to have taken, if but a peep, 
in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great 
fortune. 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary 
to have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may 
be had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an im- 
portunate race of ancestors ; and the coatless anti- 
quary in his unemblazoned cell, revolving the long 
line of a Mowbray's 7 or De Clifford's 8 pedigree, at 
those sounding names may warm himself into as gay 
a vanity as those who do inherit them. The claims 
of birth are ideal merely, and what herald shall go 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 131 

about to strip me of an idea ? Is it trenchant to their 
swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur can ? or torn 
away like a tarnished garter ? 

What, else, were the families of the great to us? 
what pleasure should we take in their tedious gene- 
alogies, or their capitulatory brass monuments ? What 
to us the uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our 
own did not answer within us to a cognate and corre- 
sponding elevation? 

Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutch- 
eon that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely 
stairs, Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft stood 
poring upon the mystic characters — thy emblematic 
supporters, with their prophetic " Resurgam" 9 — till, 
every dreg of peasantry purging off, I received unto 
myself Very Gentility ? Thou wert first in my morn- 
ing eyes ; and of nights, hast detained my steps from 
bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to 
dreaming on thee. 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veri- 
table change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, 
by transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid 
trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags, 
and colours cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of 
two centuries back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was some Da- 
mcetas 10 — feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills 
of Lincoln — did I in less earnest vindicate to myself 
the fajnily trappings of this once proud iEgon ? — re- 
paying by a backward triumph the insults he might 
possibly have heaped in his life-time upon my poor 
pastoral progenitor. 



132 THE ESS A YS OF ELIA 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present 
owners of the mansion had least reason to complain. 
They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers 
for a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to 
myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, 
or to soothe my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old W s ; " 

and not the present family of that name, who had fled 
the old waste places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, 
which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my 
own family name, one — and then another — would 
seem to smile — reaching forward from the canvas, to 
recognise the new relationship ; while the rest looked 
grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, 
and thoughts of fled posterity. 

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, 
and a lamb — that hung next the great bay window — 

with the bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of 

watchet hue 12 — so like my Alice ! 13 — I am persuaded 
she was a true Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. 

Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall, 
with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars u 
— stately busts in marble — ranged round : of whose 
countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the 
frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my 
wonder ; but the mild Galba had my love. There they 
stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immor- 
tality. 

Mine too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its on e» chair 
of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror 
of luckless poacher, or self -forgetful maiden — so com- 
mon since, that bats have roosted in it. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 133 

Mine too — whose else ? — thy costly fruit-garden, 
with' its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure- 
garden, rising backwards from the house in triple ter- 
races, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that 
a speck here and there, saved from the elements, be- 
spake their pristine state to have been gilt and glit- 
tering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ; and, 
stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wil- 
derness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long 
murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in 
the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of 
Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to 
Pan 15 or to Sylvanus 16 in their native groves, than I 
to that f ragmen tal mystery. 

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too 
fervently in your idol worship, walks and windings of 
Blakesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the 
plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes 
think that as men, when they die, do not die all, 17 so 
of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope 
— a germ to be revivified. 



POOE RELATIONS 

A poor Relation — is the most irrelevant thing in 
nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an 
odious approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a 
preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our 
prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpet- 
ually recurring mortification, — a drain on your purse, 

— a more intolerable dun upon your pride, — a draw- 
back upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, — a stain 
in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in 
your garment, — a death's head at your banquet, — - 
Agathocles' pot, 1 — a Mordecai in your gate, 2 — a Laza- 
rus at your door, — a lion in your path, — a frog in 
your chamber, — a fly in your ointment, — a mote in 
your eye, — a triumph to your enemy, an apology to 
your friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail 
in harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you 

" That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and 

respect ; that demands, and, at the same time, seems 
to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and 

— embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to 
shake, and — draweth it back again. He casually look- 
eth in about dinner-time — when the table is full. He 
offereth to go away, seeing you have company, but is 
induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's 
two children are accommodated at a side table. He' 
never cometh upon open days, when your wife says 

with some complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. 

will drop in to-day." He remembereth birthdays — 



POOR RELATIONS 135 

and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon 
one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small 

— yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice 
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port 

— yet will be prevailed upon to - empty the remainder 
glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is 
a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too 
obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests 
think " they have seen him before." Everyone specu- 
laieth upon his condition ; and the most part take him 
to be — a tide waiter. He calleth you by your Chris- 
tian name, to imply that his other is the same with 
your own. He is too familiar by half, yet yon wish he 
had less diffidence. With half the familiarity he might 
pass for a casual dependent ; with more boldness he 
would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. 
He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more 
state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a 
country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — 
yet 't is odds, from his garb and demeanour, that your 
guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at 
the whist table ; refuseth on the score of poverty, and 

— resents being left out. When the company break 
up he proffer eth to go for a coach — and lets the ser- 
vant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will 
thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote 
of — the family. He knew it when it was not quite 
so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing it now." He 
reviveth past situations to institute what he calleth — 
favourable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of con- 
gratulation, he will inquire the price of your furni- 
ture : and insults you with a special commendation 
of your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the 



136 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there was 
something more comfortable about the old tea-kettle 
— which you must remember. He dare say you must 
find a great convenience in having a carriage of your 
own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. ln- 
quireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; 
and did not know, till lately, that such-and-such had 
been the crest of the family. His memory is unseason- 
able ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; 
his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth away, you 
dismiss his chair into a corner, as precipitately as 
possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — 
a female Poor Relation. You may do something with 
the other ; you may pass him off tolerably well ; but 
your indigent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old 
humorist," you may say, " and affects to go thread- 
bare. His circumstances are better than folks would 
take them to be. You are fond of having a Character 
at your table, and truly he is one." But in the indi- 
cations of female poverty there can be no disguise. 
No woman dresses below herself from caprice. The 
truth must out without shuffling. " She is plainly 

related to the L s ; or what does she at their 

house ? " She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. 
Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her 
garb is something between a gentlewoman and a beg- 
gar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is 
most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible 
to her inferiority. He may require to be repressed 
sometimes — aliquando sufflaminandus erat 3 — but 
there is no raising her. You send her soup at din- 
ner, and she begs to be helped — after the gentlemen. 



POOR RELATIONS 137 

Mr. requests the honour of taking wine with 

her; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and 
chooses the former — because he does. She calls the 
servant Sir ; and insists on not troubling him to hold 
her plate. The housekeeper patronises her. The chil- 
dren's governess takes upon her to correct her, when 
she has mistaken the piano for harpsichord. 

Eichard Amlet, Esq., 4 in the play, is a noticeable 
instance of the disadvantages to which this chimerical 
notion of affinity constituting a claim to an acquaint- 
ance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little 
foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady with 
a great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the 
malignant maternity of an old woman, who persists 
in calling him "her son Dick." But she has where- 
withal in the end to recompense his indignities, and 
float him again upon the brilliant surface, under which 
it had been her seeming business and pleasure all along 
to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's tem- 
perament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who wanting 

Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W 5 was 

of my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a 
youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much 
pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of 
that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to keep 
inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to ward off 
derogation from itself. It was the principle of self- 
respect carried as far as it could go, without infringing 
upon that respect, which he would have every one else 
equally maintain for himself. He would have you to 
think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel 
have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, 
and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation 



138 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the 
alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude 
notice, when we have been out together on a holiday 
in the streets of 'this sneering and prying metropolis. 

W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, 

where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, 
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, 
wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place, 
with a profound aversion to the society. The servitor's 
gown (worse than his school array) clung to him with 
Nessian venom. 6 He thought himself ridiculous in a 
garb, under which Latimer 7 must have walked erect; 
and in which Hooker, 8 in his young days, possibly 
flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In 
the depths of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, 
the poor student shrunk from observation. He found 
shelter among books, which insult not ; and studies, 
that ask no questions of a youth's finances. He was 
lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out 
beyond his domains. The healing influence of studious 
pursuits was upon him, to soothe and to abstract. He 
was almost a healthy man ; when the waywardness of 
his fate broke out against him with a second and worse 

malignity. The father of W had hitherto exercised 

the humble profession of house-painter at N , near 

Oxford. A supposed interest with some of the heads 
of colleges had now induced him to take up his abode 
in that city, with the hope of being employed upon 
some public works which were talked of. From that 
moment I read in the countenance of the young man, 
the determination which at length tore him from aca- 
demical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted 
with our Universities, the distance between the gowns- 



POOR RELATIONS 139 

men and the townsmen, as they are called — the trad- 
ing part of the latter especially — is carried to an 
excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The 

temperament of W 's father was diametrically the 

reverse of his own. Old W was a little, busy, 

cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, 
would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to any- 
thing that wore the semblance of a gown — insensible 
to the winks and opener remonstrances of the young 
man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, 
perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously 

ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W 

must change the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He 
chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who 
strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can 
bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the 

struggle. I stood with W , the last afternoon I 

ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. 
It was in the fine lane leading from the High Street 

to the back of **** college, where W kept his 

rooms. He seemed thoughtful, and more reconciled. 
I ventured to rally him — finding him in a better 
mood — upon a representation of the Artist Evangel- 
ist, 9 which the old man, whose affairs were beginning 
to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort 
of frame over his really handsome shop, either as a 
token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his saint. 

"W looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, "knew 

his mounted sign — and fled." 10 A letter on his father's 
table the next morning, announced that he had accepted 
a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portu- 
gal. He was among the first who perished before the 
walls of St. Sebastian. 11 



140 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began 
with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon 
a recital so eminently painful; but this theme of poor 
relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic 
as well :is COmic associations, that it is difficult to keep 

the account distinct without blending. The earliest im- 
pressions which I received <>n this matter, are certainly 
not attended with anything painful, or very humiliat- 
ing, in the recalling. At my father's table (no very 
splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the 
mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in 
neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His 

deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words 
few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his 

presence. I had Little inclination to have done so — 

for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular 
elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was in no 
case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, 
which appeared OH no Other occasion, distinguished 
the days of his coining. I used to think him a pro- 
digiously rich man. All I could make out of him was, 
that be and my father had been schoolfellows a world 
ago at Lincoln, and thai, he came from the Mint. The 
Mini, 1 knew to he a, place where all the money was 
coined and I thought he was the owner of all that 
money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves 

about his presence. He seemed above human infirm- 
ities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur in- 
vested him. From some inexplicable doom 1 fancied 

him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; 
a captive — a stately being, let out of the Tower on 

Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of 

my father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect 



roon RELATIONS 141 

which we all in common manifested towards him, would 
rentlire now and then to stand up against him in 

Homo argument, touching their youthful days. The 

Iiouhoh of Mm ancient city of Lincoln arc divided ( as 
most of my readers know) between Mm dwellei'H on 
the hill, and in the valley. Thin marked distinction 
formed an obvioim division between tlm boys who lived 
abovo (however brought toxoid mr in a common school) 
and fcho hoys whose paternal residence was on Mm 
plain ; a suflieient c.'mihc of hostility in I. he code of 
those young ( Iroti uses.' ^ My father had hcen :i, load- 
ing Mountaineer ; :i n<l would Htill maintain the ecu- 
er.il Hiiperiority, in skill and hardihood, of Llm Ahmw 
Sot/8 ( his own faction ) over I, he livltrm /iot/H (so worn 
they called ), of which party his contemporary had 
been a chieftain. IYl:i,ny and hot were the skirmishes 
on this topic -the only one upon which the old gen- 
tleman was over brought out and had blood bred ; 
even HOinetimoS almost to the reeonimencenient (ho I 
expected) of actual hostilities. I'ut my father, who 
Hcornod to insist upon advantages, generally contrived 
to turn the conversation upon Home adroit by com 
inundation of the old Minster; in the general prefer- 
ence of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, 
fchd dweller on the hill, and the plain born, could meet 

on a conciliating level, and lay down their Less import- 
ant differences. Once only I Haw tlm old gentleman 
really ruffled, and I remembered with anguish tlm 
thought that came over mo: u Perhaps he will never 
come here again." lie had been pressed to take 
another plate of tlm viand, which I have already 
mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his 
visitn. He had refused with a resistance amounting 



142 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

to rigour, when my aunt — an old Lincolnian, but 
who had something of this in common with my cousin 
Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out 
of season — uttered the following memorable appli- 
cation — " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you 
do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman 
said nothing at the time — but he took occasion in 
the course of the evening, when some argument had 
intervened between them, to utter with an emphasis 
which chilled the company, and which chills me now 
as I write it — "Woman, you are superannuated." 
John Billet did not survive long, after the digesting 
of this affront ; but he survived long enough to assure 
me that peace was actually restored ! and, if I remem- 
ber aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted 
in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. 
He died at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long 
held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence ; 
and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, 
which were found in his escritoire after his decease, 
left the world, blessing God that he had enough to 
bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any 
man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor Kelation. 



STAGE ILLUSION 

A play is said to be well or ill acted in proportion 
to the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illu- 
sion can in any case be perfect, is not the question. 
The nearest approach to it, we are told, is, when the 
actor appears wholly unconscious of the presence of 
spectators. In tragedy — in all which is to affect the 
feelings — this undivided attention to his stage busi- 
ness seems indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed 
with every day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while 
these references to an audience, in the shape of rant 
or sentiment, are not too frequent or palpable, a suf- 
ficient quantity of illusion for the purposes of dramatic 
interest may be said to be produced in spite of them. 
But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in 
certain characters in comedy, especially those which 
are a little extravagant, or which involve some notion 
repugnant to the moral sense, it is not a proof of the 
highest skill in the comedian when, without absolutely 
appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit under- 
standing with them ; and makes them, unconsciously 
to themselves, a party in the scene. The utmost nicety 
is required in the mode of doing this ; but we speak 
only of the great artists in the profession. 

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to 
feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, per- 
haps, cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon 
a stage would produce anything but mirth. Yet we 
most of us remember Jack Bannister's 1 cowards. 
Could anything be more agreeable, more pleasant ? 



144 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

We love the rogues. How was this effected but by the 
exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinua- 
tion to us, the spectators, even in the extremity of the 
shaking fit, that he was not half such a coward as we 
took him for ? We saw all the common symptoms of 
the malady upon him ; the quivering lip, the cowering 
knees, the teeth chattering ; and could have sworn 
" that man was frightened." But we forgot all the 
while — or kept it almost a secret to ourselves — that 
he never once lost his self-possession ; that he let out 
by a thousand droll looks and gestures — meant to us, 
and not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in 
the scene, that his confidence in his own resources had 
never once deserted him. Was this a genuine picture 
of a coward ? or not rather a likeness, which the clever 
artist contrived to palm upon us instead of an original ; 
while we secretly connived at the delusion for the pur- 
pose of greater pleasure, than a more genuine coun- 
terfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness, and utter 
self -desertion, which we know to be concomitants of 
cowardice in real life, could have given us ? 

Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so en- 
durable on the stage, but because the skilful actor, by 
a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct appeal to 
us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odious- 
ness, by seeming to engage our compassion for the in- 
secure tenure by which he holds his money bags and 
parchments ? By this subtle vent half of the hatef ul- 
ness of the character — the self-closeness with which 
in real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of 
men — evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic ; 
i. e. is no genuine miser. Here again a diverting like- 
ness is substituted for a very disagreeable reality. 



STAGE ILLUSION 145 

Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of old 
men, which produce only pain to behold in the real- 
ities, counterfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether 
for the comic appendages to them, but in part from an 
inner conviction that they are being acted before us ; 
that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing 
itself. They please by being done under the life, or 
beside it ; not to the life. When Gatty 2 acts an old 
man, is he angry indeed ? or only a pleasant counter- 
feit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, without 
pressing upon us the uneasy sense of a reality. 

Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too 
natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing 
could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. 
Emery ; 3 this told excellently in his Tyke, and charac- 
ters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same 
rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, 
and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before 
the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and 
dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest 
of the Personae Dramatis. There was as little link 
between him and them as betwixt himself and the 
audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and 
unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution 
was masterly. But comedy is not this unbending thing ; 
for this reason, that the same degree of credibility is 
not required of it as to serious scenes. The degrees 
of credibility demanded to the two things may be illus- 
trated by the different sort of truth which we expect 
when a man tells us a mournful or a merry story. If 
we suspect the former of falsehood in any one tittle, 
we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at 
a suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful 



146 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with 
less than absolute truth. 'T is the same with dramatic 
illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an 
audience naturalised behind the scenes, taken into the 
interest of the drama, welcomed as by-standers how- 
ever. There is something ungracious in a comic actor 
holding himself aloof from all participation or con- 
cern with those who are come to be diverted by him. 
Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own 
be told of it ; but an old fool in farce may think he 
sees something, and by conscious words and looks 
express it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and 
gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric, 4 
for instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of 
the scene, we approve of the contempt with which 
he is treated. But when the pleasant impertinent of 
comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and 
raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities worries the 
studious man with taking up his leisure, or making his 
house his home, the same sort of contempt expressed 
(however natural^) would destroy the balance of delight 
in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the 
actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert 
nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the audi- 
ence, and express only so much dissatisfaction and 
peevishness as is consistent with the pleasure of com- 
edy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half 
put on. If he repel the intruder with the sober set 
face of a man in earnest, and more especially if he 
deliver his expostulations in a tone which in the world 
must necessarily provoke a duel, his real-life manner 
will destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic exist- 
ence of the other character (which to render it comic 



STAGE ILLUSION 147 

demands an antagonist comicality on the part of the 
character opposed to it), and convert what was meant 
for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece 
of impertinence indeed, which would raise no diver- 
sion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in ear- 
nest upon Sbiij unworthy person. A very judicious actor 
(in most of his parts) seems to have fallen into an 
error of this sort in his playing with Mr. Wrench 5 
in the farce of Free and Easy. 

'Many instances would be tedious ; these may suf- 
fice to show that comic acting at least does not always 
demand from the performer that strict abstraction from 
all reference to an audience which is exacted of it ; 
but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take 
place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be at- 
tained by a judicious understanding, not too openly 
announced, between the ladies and gentlemen — on 
both sides of the curtain. 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

So far from the position holding true, that great wit 
(or genius, in our modern way of speaking) has a neces- 
sary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the con- 
trary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is 
impossible for the mind to conceive a mad Shakspeare. 
The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here 
chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admira- 
ble balance of all the faculties. Madness is the dispro- 
portionate straining or excess of any one of them. " So 
strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend, 

" — did Nature to him frame, 
As all things but his judgment overcame ; 
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 
Tempering that mighty sea below." * 

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the 
raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, 
to which they have no parallel in their own experience, 
besides the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and 
fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the 
poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. He is 
not possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. 
In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his 
native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and 
is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl with- 
out dismay ; he wins his flight without self -loss through 
realms of chaos " and old night." 2 Or if, abandoning 
himself to that severer chaos of a " human mind un- 
tuned," he is content awhile to be mad with Lear, 3 or 
to hate mankind (a sort of madness) with Timon, 4 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 149 

neither is that madness, nor this misanthropy, so un- 
checked, but that — never letting the reins of reason 
wholly go, while most he seems to do so — he has 
his better genius still whispering at his ear, with the 
good servant Kent 5 suggesting saner counsels, or with 
the honest Steward Flavius 6 recommending kindlier 
resolutions. Where he seems most to recede from hu- 
manity, he will be found the truest to it. From beyond 
the scope of nature if he summon possible existences, 
he* subjugates them to the law of her consistency. He 
is beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even 
when he appears most to betray and desert her. His 
ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very monsters are 
tamed to his hand, even as that wild sea-brood, shep- 
herded by Proteus. 7 He tames and he clothes them 
with attributes of flesh and blood, till they wonder at 
themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit to 
European vesture. Caliban, 8 the Witches, 9 are as true 
to the laws of their own nature (ours with a differ- 
ence), as Othello, Hamlet, aiid Macbeth. Herein the 
great and the little wits are differenced ; that if the 
latter wander ever so little from nature or actual exist- 
ence, they lose themselves, and their readers. Their 
phantoms are lawless ; their visions nightmares. They 
do not create, which implies shaping and consistency. 
Their imaginations are not active — for to be active is 
to call something into act and form — but passive, as 
men in sick dreams. For the super-natural, or some- 
thing super-added to what we know of nature, they 
give you the plainly non-natural. And if this were all, 
and that these mental hallucinations were discoverable 
only in the treatment of subjects out of nature, or 
transcending it, the judgment might with some plea 



150 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wantonised : but 
even in the describing of real and every-day life, that 
which is before their eyes, one of these lesser wits 
shall more deviate from nature — show more of that 
inconsequence, which has a natural alliance with frenzy 
— than a great genius in his "maddest fits," as Wi- 
ther 10 somewhere calls them. We appeal to any one 
that is acquainted with the common run of Lane's 
novels, 11 — as they existed some twenty or thirty years 
back, — those scanty intellectual viands of the whole 
female reading public, till a happier genius arose, and 
expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms, — whether 
he has not found his brain more " betossed," 12 his 
memory more puzzled, his sense of when and where 
more confounded, among the improbable events, the 
incoherent incidents, the inconsistent characters, or 
no-characters, of some third-rate love intrigue — where 
the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss 
Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath and 
Bond Street — a more bewildering dreaminess induced 
upon him, than he has felt wandering over all the fairy 
grounds of Spenser. In the productions we refer to, 
nothing but names and places is familiar ; the persons 
are neither of this world nor of any other conceivable 
one; an endless string of activities without purpose, 
or purposes destitute of motive : — we meet phantoms 
in our known walks ; fantasques only christened. In 
the poet we have names which announce fiction ; and 
we have absolutely no place at all, for the things and 
persons of the Fairy Queen prate not of their « where- 
about." 13 But in their inner nature, and the law of 
their speech and actions, we are at home and upon 
acquainted ground. The one turns life into a dream ; 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 151 

the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of 
e very-day occurrences. By what subtile art of tracing 
the mental processes it is effected, we are not philo- 
sophers enough to explain, but in that wonderful epi- 
sode of the cave of Mammon, 14 in which the Money 
God 15 appears first in the lowest form of a miser, is 
then a worker of metals, and becomes the god of all 
the treasures of the world : and has a daughter, Ambi- 
tion, before whom all the world kneels for favours, — 
with the Hesperian fruit, 16 the waters of Tantalus, 17 
with Pilate washing his hands vainly, 18 but not imper- 
tinently, in the same stream, — that we should be at 
one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, 
at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, 19 in a palace 
and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mutations 
of the most rambling dream, and our judgment yet all 
the time awake, and neither able nor willing to detect 
the fallacy, — is a proof of that hidden sanity which 
still guides the poet in the widest seeming aberrations. 
It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a 
copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some 
sort — but what a copy ! Let the most romantic of 
us, that has been entertained all night with the spec- 
tacle of some wild and magnificent vision, recombine 
it in the morning, and try it by his waking judgment. 
That which appeared so shifting, and yet so coherent, 
while that faculty was passive, when it comes under 
cool examination, shall appear so reasonless and so un- 
linked, that we are ashamed to have been so deluded ; 
and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster for 
a god. But the transitions in this episode are every 
whit as violent as in the most extravagant dream, and 
yet the waking judgment ratifies them. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

Sera tamen respexit 
Libertas. Virghl. 1 

A Clerk I was in London gay. 

O'Keefe. 2 

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste 
the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in 
the irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy 
prison days prolonged through middle age down to 
decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release 
or respite ; to have lived to forget that there are such 
things as holydays, or to remember them but as the 
prerogatives of childhood ; then, and then only, will 
you be able to appreciate my deliverance. 

It is now six and thirty years since I took my seat 
at the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the 
transition at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and 
the frequently intervening vacations of school days, 
to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day 
attendance at a counting-house. But time partially 
reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content 

— doggedly content, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; but Sun- 
days, admirable as the institution of them is for pur- 
poses of worship, are for that very reason the very 
worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. 
In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon 
a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheer- 
ful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers 

— the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those 
eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 153 

Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succes- 
sion of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously dis- 
played wares of tradesmen, which make a week-day 
saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis 
so delightful — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously 
to idle over. No busy faces to re-create the idle man 
who contemplates them ever passing by — the very 
face of business a charm by contrast to his temporary 
relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy 
countenances — or half -happy at best — of emanci- 
pated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and 
there a servant maid that has got leave to go out, who, 
slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the 
capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily express- 
ing the hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The very 
strollers in the fields on that day looked anything but 
comfortable. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and 
a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer 
to go and air myself in my native fields of Hert- 
fordshire. This last was a great indulgence ; and the 
prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me 
up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. 
But when the week came round, did the glittering 
phantom of the distance keep touch with me ? or rather 
was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in rest- 
less pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to 
find out how to make the most of them ? Where was 
the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a 
taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, 
counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must 
intervene before such another snatch would come. 
Still the prospect of its coming threw something of an 



154 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. 
Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sus- 
tained my thraldom. 

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have 
ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere ca- 
price) of incapacity for business. This, during my 
latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it 
was visible in all the lines of my countenance. My 
health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually 
a dread of some crisis, to which I should be found 
unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over 
again all night in my sleep, and would awake with 
terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my ac- 
counts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no 
prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had 
grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had 
entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me 
upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did 
not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my 
employers, when on the 5th of last month, a day ever 

to be remembered by me, L , 3 the junior partner 

in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me 
with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of 
them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my in- 
firmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventu- 
ally be obliged to resign his service. He spoke some 
words of course to hearten me, and there the matter 
rested. A whole week I remained labouring under the 
impression that I had acted imprudently in my dis- 
closure ; that I had foolishly given a handle against 
myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. 
A week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 155 

I verily believe, in my whole life, when on the evening 
of the 12th of April, just as 1 was about quitting my 
desk to go home (it might be about eight o'clock) 
I received an awful summons to attend the presence 
of the whole assembled firm in the formidable back 
parlour. I thought now my time is surely come, I have 
done for myself, I am going to be told that they have 

no longer occasion for me. L , I could see, smiled 

at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me, 

— when to my utter astonishment B , 4 the eldest 

partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length 
of my services, my very meritorious conduct during 
the whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did 
he find out that ? I protest I never had the confidence 
to think as much). He went on to descant on the 
expediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how 
my heart panted !), and asking me a few questions as 
to the amount of my own property, of which I have 
a little, ended with a proposal, to which his three part- 
ners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from 
the house, which I had served so well, a pension for 
life to the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed 
salary — a magnificent offer! I do not know what 
I answered between surprise and gratitude, but it was 
understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was 
told that I was free from that hour to leave their serv- 
ice. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten minutes 
after eight I went home — for ever. This noble bene- 
fit — gratitude forbids me to conceal their names — I 
owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm in 
the world — the house of Boldero, Merryweather, 
Bosanquet, and Lacy. 5 

Esto perpetua ! 6 



156 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. 
I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too con- 
fused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking 
I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in 
the condition of a prisoner in the Old Bastile, 7 sud- 
denly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I could 
scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing 
out of Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eter- 
nity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It 
seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than 
I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, 
I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I could 
see no end of my possessions ; I wanted some stew- 
ard, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time 
for me. And here let me caution persons grown old 
in active business, not lightly, nor without weighing 
their own resources, to forego their customary employ- 
ment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel 
it by myself, but I know that my resources are suffi- 
cient ; and now that those first giddy raptures have 
subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessed- 
ness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all 
holydays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung 
heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not 
walk all day long, as I used to do in those old tran- 
sient holydays, thirty miles a day, to make the most 
of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it 
away, but I do not read in that violent measure, with 
which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, 
I used to weary out my head and eye- sight in by-gone 
winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when 
the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; 
I let it come to me. I am like the man 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 157 

—that 's born, and has his years come to him, 



In some green desert. 8 

M Years," you will say ; " what is this superannu- 
ated simpleton calculating upon ? He has already told 
us he is past fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but de- 
duct out of them the hours which I have lived to other 
people, and not to myself, and you will find me still 
a young fellow. For that is the only true Time, which 
a- man can properly call his own, that which he has all 
to himself ; the rest, though in some sense he may be 
said to live it, is other people's time, not his. The 
remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least 
multiplied for me threefold. My ten next years, if I 
stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 
'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the 
commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces 
are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time 
had intervened since I quitted the Counting House. I 
could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. 
The partners, and the clerks with whom I had for so 
many years, and for so many hours in each day of the 
year been so closely associated — being suddenly re- 
moved from them — they seemed as dead to me. There 
is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this 
fancy, in a Tragedy, by Sir Robert Howard, speaking 
of a friend's death : — 

'T was but just now he went away ; 



I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 9 



158 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain 
to go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old 
desk-fellows — my co-brethren of the qnill — that I 
had left below in the state militant. Not all the kind- 
ness with which they received me could quite restore 
to me that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore 
enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old 
jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My 
old desk ; the peg where I hung my hat, were appro- 
priated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not 

take it kindly. D 1 take me if I did not feel some 

remorse — beast, if I had not, — at quitting my old 
compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six and 
thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and 
conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. 
Had it been so rugged then after all ? or was I a cow- 
ard simply ? Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also 
know, that these suggestions are a common fallacy of 
the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. 
I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was at 
least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get 
quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old 
cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will 
come among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, 

Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! Do , mild, 

slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI , officious to 

do, and to volunteer good services ! 10 — and thou, 
thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham n or a 
Whittington 12 of old stately House of Merchants ; 
with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, 
pent-up offices, where candles for one half the year 
supplied the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy con- 
tributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, fare- 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 159 

well ! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collec- 
tion of some wandering bookseller, my " works ! " 
There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on 
thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aqui- 
nas 13 left, and full as useful ! My mantle I bequeath 
among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first 
communication. At that period I was approaching 
to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of 
a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Some- 
thing of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense 
of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed 
light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had 
been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor 
Carthusian, 14 from strict cellular discipline suddenly 
by some revolution returned upon the world. I am 
now as if I had never been other than my own mas- 
ter. It is natural to me to go where I please, to do 
what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the 
day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have 
been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. 
I digress into Soho, to explore a book-stall. Methinks 
I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing 
strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine pic- 
ture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise? What 
is become of Fish Street Hill ? Where is Fenchurch 
Street? Stones of old Mincing Lane which I have 
worn with my daily pilgrimage for six and thirty years, 
to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your ever- 
lasting flints 15 now vocal ? I indent the gayer flags 
of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am strangely 
among the Elgin marbles. 16 It was no hyperbole when 
I ventured to compare the change in my condition to 



160 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

a passing into another world. Time stands still in a 
manner to me. I have lost all distinction of season. 
I do not know the day of the week, or of the month. 
Each day used to be individually felt by me in its 
reference to the foreign post days ; in its distance from, 
or propinquity to the next Sunday. I had my Wed- 
nesday feelings, 17 my Saturday nights' sensations. The 
genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the 
whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The 
phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to fol- 
low, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. 
What charm has washed the Ethiop white ? What 
is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. 
Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a holiday 
as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fu- 
gitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity 
of pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week 
day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudg- 
ing the huge can tie which it used to seem to cut out 
of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I can 
visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much 
occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him 
with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to 
Windsor 18 this fine May-morning. It is Lucretian 
pleasure 19 to behold the poor drudges, whom I have 
left behind in the world, carking and caring ; like 
horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round 
— and what is it all for ? A man can never have too 
much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a 
little son, I would christen him nothing-to-do ; he 
should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his 
element as long as he is operative. I am altogether 
for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 161 

come and swallow up those accursed cotton mills ? 

Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it 

down 

As low as to the fiends. 20 

I am no longer * * * * * * ? clerk to the firm of, 
&g. I am Retired Leisure. 21 I am to be met with in 
trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my 
vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no 
fixed pace nor with any settled purpose. I walk about ; 
no? to and from. They tell me, a certain cum digni- 
tate 22 air, that has been buried so long with my other 
good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I 
grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a 
newspaper it is to read the state of the opera. Opus 
operatum est. 23 I have done all that I came into this 
world to do. I have worked task-work, and have the 
rest of the day to myself. 



OLD CHINA 1 

I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I enquire for the 
china-closet, and next for the picture gallery. I can- 
not defend the order of preference, but by saying, 
that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient 
a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it 
was an acquired one. I can call" to mind the first 
play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to ; 
but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and 
saucers were introduced into my imagination. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now 
have ? — to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured gro- 
tesques, that under the notion of men and women, 
float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that 
world before perspective — a china tea-cup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance can- 
not diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear 
to our optics), yet on terra firma still — for so we 
must in courtesy interpret that sjDeck of deeper blue, 

— which the decorous artist, to. prevent absurdity, had 
made to spring up beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, 
if possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, 2 handing 
tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how 
distance seems to set off respect ! And here the same 
lady, or another — for likeness is identity on tea-cups 

— is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the 



OLD CHINA 163 

hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty- 
mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as 
angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the 
midst of a flowery mead — a furlong off on the other 
side of the same strange stream! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of 
their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the 
hays. 3 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-exten- 
sive — so objects show, seen through the lucid atmo- 
sphere of fine Cathay. 4 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over 
our Hyson 5 (which we are old fashioned enough to 
drink unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these 
speciosa miracula 6 upon a set of extraordinary old 
blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now for 
the first time using ; and could not help remarking, 
how favourable circumstances had been to us of late 
years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes 
with trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment 
seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am 
quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. 7 

" I wish the good old times would come again," she 
said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, 
that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle state " 
— so she was pleased to ramble on — "in which I am 
sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but 
a purchase, now that you have money enough and to 
spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we 
coveted a cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado I had 
to get you to consent in those times ! ) — we were 
used to have a debate two or three days before, and 
to weigh the for and against, and think what we might 



164 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, 
that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth 
buying then, when we felt the money that we paid 
for it." 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made 
to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame 
upon you, it grew so thread-bare — and all because of 
that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, 8 which you dragged 
home late at night from Barker's 9 in Covent Gar- 
den ? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks be- 
fore we could make up our minds to the purchase, and 
had not come to a determination till it was near ten 
o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from 
Islington, 10 fearing you should be too late — and when 
the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his 
shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting 
bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treas- 
ures — and when you lugged it home, wishing it were 
twice as cumbersome — and when you presented it to 
me — and when we were exploring the perfectness of 
it (collating you called it) — and while I was repair- 
ing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your 
impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak 

— was there no pleasure in being a poor man ? or can 
those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are 
so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich 
and finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which 
you flaunted it about in that overworn suit — your old 
corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than you 
should have done, to pacify your conscience for the 
mighty sum of fifteen — or sixteen shillings was it ? 

— a great affair we thought it then — which you had 
lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy 



OLD CHINA 165 

any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you 
ever bring me home any nice old purchases now." 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for 
laying out a less number of shillings upon that print 
after Lionardo, 11 which we christened the 'Lady 
Blanch ; ' when you looked at the purchase, and thought 
of the money — and thought of the money, and looked 
again at the picture — was there no pleasure in being 
a poor man ? Now, you have nothing to do but to 
walk into Colnaghi's, 12 and buy a wilderness of Leo- 
nardos. Yet do you ? " 

" Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to 
Enfield, 13 and Potter's Bar, 14 and Waltham, 15 when we 
had a holyday — holydays, and all other fun, are gone, 
now we are rich — and the little hand-basket in which 
I used to deposit our day's fare of savoury cold lamb 
and salad — and how you would pry about at noon- 
tide for some decent house, where we might go in, and 
produce our store — only paying for the ale that you 
must call for — and speculate upon the looks of the 
landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table- 
cloth — and wish for such another honest hostess, as 
Izaak Walton 16 has described many a one on the 
pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a-fishing — 
and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and 
sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us — but 
we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would 
eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator 
his Trout Hall ? Now, — when we go out a day's 
pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of 
the way — and go into a fine inn, and order the best 
of dinners, never debating the expense — which, after 
all, never has half the relish of those chance country 



166 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, 
and a precarious welcome." 

" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now 
but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we 
used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, 17 and 
the Surrender of Calais, 17 and Bannister 18 and Mrs. 
Bland 18 in the Children in the Wood 19 — when we 
squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four 
times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where 
you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought 
me — and more strongly I felt obligation to you for 
having brought me — and the pleasure was the better 
for a little shame — and when the curtain drew up, 
what cared we for our place in the house, or what 
mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts 
were with Rosalind in Arden, 20 or with Viola at the 
Court of Illyria ? 20 You used to say, that the Gal- 
lery was the best place of all for enjoying a play so- 
cially — that the relish of such exhibitions must be in 
proportion to the infrequency of going — that the 
company we met there, not being in general readers 
of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did 
attend, to what was going on, on the stage — because 
a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was 
impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections 
we consoled our pride then — and I appeal to you, 
whether, as a woman, I met generally with less atten- 
tion and accommodation, than I have done since in 
more expensive situations in the house? The getting 
in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient 
staircases, was bad enough, — but there was still a law 
of civility to woman recognised to quite as great an 
extent as we ever found in the other passages — and 



OLD CHINA 167 

how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug 
seat, and the play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay 
our money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in 
the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, 
well enough then — but sight, and all, I think, is gone 
with our poverty." 

" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before 
they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, 
while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice 
supper, a treat. What treat can you have now? If we 
were to treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties 
a little above our means, it would be selfish and 
wicked. It is very little more that we allow ourselves 
beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes 
what I call a treat — when two people living together, 
as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in 
a cheap luxury, which both like ; while each apolo- 
gises, and is willing to take both halves of the blame 
to his single share. I see no harm in people making 
much of themselves in that sense of the word. It may 
give them a hint how to make much of others. But 
now — what I mean by the word — we never do make 
much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do 
not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we 
were, just above poverty. 

" I know what you were going to say, that it is 
mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all 
meet, — and much ado we used to have every Thirty- 
first Night of December to account for our exceedings 
— many a long face did you make over your puzzled 
accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had 
spent so much — or that we had not spent so much — 
or that it was impossible we should spend so much 



168 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

next year — and still we found our slender capital de- 
creasing — but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and 
compromises of one sort or another, and talk of cur- 
tailing this charge, and doing without that for the 
future — and the hope that youth brings, and laughing 
spirits (in which you were never poor till now) we 
pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with « lusty 
brimmers ' 21 (as you used to quote it out of hearty 
cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to 
welcome in the « coming guest.' Now we have no reck- 
oning at all at the end of the old year — no flattering 
promises about the new year doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occa- 
sions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am 
careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, 
smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear 
imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of 
a poor — hundred pounds a year. " It is true we were 
happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, 
my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the ex- 
cess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the 
sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had 
much to struggle with, as we grew up together, we 
have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened, and 
knit our compact closer. We could never have been 
what we have been to each other, if we had always 
had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The 
resisting power — those natural dilations of the youth- 
ful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten — with 
us are long since passed away. Competence to age is 
supplementary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but 
I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, where 
we formerly walked : live better, and lie softer — and 



OLD CHINA 169' 

shall be wise to do so — than we had means to do in 
those good old days you speak of. Yet could those 
days return — could you and I once more walk our 
thirty miles a-day — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland 
again be young, and you and I be young to see them 

— could the good old one-shilling gallery days return — 
they are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and 
I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by 
our well-carpeted fire-side, sitting on this luxurious 
sofa — be once more struggling up those inconvenient 
staircases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed 
by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers — 
could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours 

— and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which 
always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, 
let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down 
beneath us — I know not the fathom line that ever 
touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury 
more wealth in than Croesus 23 had, or the great Jew 

R 23 is supposed to have^. to purchase it. And now 

do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter hold- 
ing an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over 
the head of that pretty insipid half-Madonaish chit of 
a lady in that very blue summer house." 



POPULAK FALLACIES 1 

THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST 

The severest exaction surely ever invented upon 
the self-denial of poor human nature ! This is to ex- 
pect a gentleman to give a treat without partaking of 
it ; to sit esurient at his own table, and commend the 
flavour of his venison upon the absurd strength of his 
never touching it himself. On the contrary, we love 
to see a wag taste his own joke to his party ; to watch 
a quirk, or a merry conceit, flickering upon the lips 
some seconds before the tongue is delivered of it. If 
it be good, fresh, and racy — begotten of the occa- 
sion ; if he that utters it never thought it before, he 
is naturally the first to be tickled with it ; and any 
suppression of such complacence we hold to be churl- 
ish and insulting. What does it seem to imply, but 
that your company is weak or foolish enough to be 
moved by an image or a fancy, that shall stir you 
not at all, or but faintly? This is exactly the humour 
of the fine gentleman in Mandeville, 2 who, while he 
dazzles his guests with the display of some costly toy, 
affects himself to " see nothing considerable in it." 

THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST 

If by the worst be only meant the most far-fetched 
and startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by 
the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at 
the ear ; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an 
antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes 
bounding into the presence, and does not show the less 



POPULAR FALLACIES 171 

comic for being dragged in sometimes by the head and 
shoulders. What though it limp a little, or prove de- 
fective in one leg — all the better. A pun may easily 
be too curious and artificial. Who has not at one time 
or other been at a party of professors (himself 
perhaps an old offender in that line), where, after 
ringing a round of the most ingenious conceits, every 
man contributing his shot, and some there the most 
expert shooters of the day ; after making a poor word 
run^ the gauntlet till it is ready to drop ; after hunt- 
ing and winding it through all the possible ambages 
of similar sounds ; after squeezing and hauling, and 
tugging at it, till the very milk of it will not yield 
a drop further, — suddenly some obscure, unthought-of 
fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice to the 
trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, 
as we do by a known poor man when a money-sub- 
scription is going round, no one calling upon him for 
his quota — has all at once come out with something 
so whimsical, yet so pertinent ; so brazen in its pre- 
tensions, yet so impossible to be denied ; so exquisitely 
good, and so deplorably bad, at the same time, — that 
it has proved a Robin Hood's shot ; any thing ulterior 
to that is despaired of ; and the party breaks up, 
unanimously voting it to be the very worst (that is, 
best) pun of the evening. This species of wit is the 
better for not being perfect in all its parts. What it 
gains in completeness, it loses in naturalness. The 
more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it 
has upon some other faculties. The puns which are 
most entertaining are those which will least bear an 
analysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded with 
a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's Miscellanies. 



172 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carry- 
ing a hare through the streets, accosted him with this 
extraordinary question : " Prithee, friend, is that thy 
own hare, or a wig? " 

There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A 
man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a de- 
fence of it against a critic who should be laughter- 
proof. The quibble in itself is not considerable. It is 
only a new turn given, by a little false pronunciation, 
to a very common, though not very courteous inquiry. 
Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner-party, it 
would have been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, 
it would have shown much less wit than rudeness. We 
must take in the totality of time, place, and person ; 
the pert look of the inquiring scholar, the despond- 
ing looks of the puzzled porter ; the one stopping at 
leisure, the other hurrying on with his burthen ; the 
innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the first 
member of the question, with the utter and inextricable 
irrelevancy of the second ; the place — a public street, 
not favourable to frivolous investigations ; the affront- 
ive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common 
question) invidiously transferred to the derivative 
(the new turn given to it) in the implied satire ; 
namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of 
the good things which they carry, they being in most 
countries considered rather as the temporary trustees 
than owners of such dainties, — which the fellow was 
beginning to understand ; but then the wig. again 
comes in, and he can make nothing of it ; all put to- 
gether constitute a picture : Hogarth could have made 
it intelligible on canvas. 

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a 



POPULAR FALLACIES 173 

very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the con- 
cluding member, which is its very beauty, and consti- 
tutes the surprise. The same persons shall cry up 
for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the 
broken Cremona ; * because it is made out in all its 
parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. We 
venture to call it cold ; because of thousands who have 
admired it, it would be difficult to find one who has 
heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the judg- 
ment merely (setting the risible faculty aside), we 
must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. 
But as some stories are said to be too good to be true, 
it may with equal truth be asserted of this bi- verbal 
allusion, that it is too good to be natural. One cannot 
help suspecting that the incident was invented to fit 
the line. It would have been better had it been less 
perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suf- 
fered by filling up. The nimium Vidua was enough 
in conscience ; the Cremonce 3 afterwards loads it. It 
is in fact a double pun ; and we have always observed 
that a superfcetation in this sort of wit is dangerous. 
When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom poli- 
tic to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated 
a second time ; or, perhaps, the mind of man (with 
reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to 
lodge two puns at a time. The impression, to be forci- 
ble, must be simultaneous and undivided. 

THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN 
THE MOUTH 

Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope 
we have more delicacy than to do either ; but some 

* Swift's. 



174 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

faces spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries. 
And what if the beast, which my friend would force 
upon my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a sorry 
Bosinante, 4 a lean, ill-favoured jade, whom no gentle- 
man could think of setting up in his stables ? Must 
I, rather than not be obliged to my friend, make her 
a companion to Eclipse 5 or Lightf oot ? A horse-giver, 
no more than a horse-seller, has a right to palm his 
spavined article upon us for good ware. An equivalent 
is expected in either case ; and, with my own good 
will, I would no more be cheated out of my thanks 
than out of my money. Some people have a knack of 
putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you 
to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing. 
Our friend Mitis carries this humour of never refus- 
ing a present, to the very point of absurdity — if it 
were possible to couple the ridiculous with so much 
mistaken delicacy, and real good nature. Not an apart- 
ment in his fine house (and he has a true taste in 
household decorations), but is stuffed up with some 
preposterous print or mirror — the worst adapted to 
his panels that may be — the presents of his friends 
that know his weakness ; while his noble Vandykes 6 
are displaced, to make room for a set of daubs, the 
work of some wretched artist of his acquaintance, 
who, having had them returned upon his hands for 
bad likenesses, finds his account in bestowing them 
here gratis. The good creature has not the heart to 
mortify the painter at the expense of an honest re- 
fusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one at the same 
time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour, sur- 
rounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows 
whom, while the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys 



POPULAR FALLACIES lib 

of his own honourable family, in favour to these 
adopted frights, are consigned to the staircase and the 
lumber-room. In like manner his goodly shelves are 
one by one stript of his favourite old authors, to give 
place to a collection of presentation copies — the flour 
and bran of modern poetry. A presentation copy, 
reader, — if haply you are yet innocent of such favours, 

— is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you 
by the author, with his foolish autograph at the begin- 
ning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he only demands 
your friendship ; if a brother author he expects from 
you a book of yours, which does sell, in return. We 
can speak to experience, having by us a tolerable as- 
sortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor 
to death — we are willing to acknowledge, that in 
some gifts there is sense. A duplicate out of a friend's 
library (where he has more than one copy of a rare 
author) is intelligible. There are favours, short of 
the pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at among 
gentlemen — which confer as much grace upon the 
acceptor as the offerer ; the kind, we confess, which is 
most to our palate, is of those little conciliatory miss- 
ives, which for their vehicle generally choose a ham- 
per — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine 

— though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter 
that it be home-made. We love to have our friend in 
the country sitting thus at our table by proxy ; to ap- 
prehend his presence (though a hundred miles may be 
between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects 
to us his " plump corpusculum ; " to taste him in grouse 
or woodcock ; to feel him gliding down in the toast 
peculiar to the latter : to concorporate him in a slice 
of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have him 



176 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

within ourselves ; to know him intimately : such par- 
ticipation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians 
phrase it. For these considerations we should be sorry 
if certain restrictive regulations, 7 which are thought 
to bear hard upon the peasantry of this country, were 
entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now 
stands, makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius 
(knowing his gout) with a leash of partridges. Titius 
(suspecting his partiality for them) passes them to 
Lucius ; who in his turn, preferring his friend's relish 
to his own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their 
ever widening progress, and round of unconscious cir- 
cum-migration, they distribute the seeds of harmony 
over half a parish. We are well disposed to this kind 
of sensible remembrances ; and are the less apt to be 
taken by those little airy tokens — impalpable to the 
palate — which, under the names of rings, lockets, 
keep-sakes, amuse some people's fancy mightily. We 
could never away with these indigestible trifles. They 
are the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship. 

THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO 

HOMELY 

Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ; 
the home of the very poor man, and another which 
we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of cheap 
entertainment, and the benches of ale-houses, if they 
could speak, might bear mournful testimony to the 
first. To them the very poor man resorts for an image 
of the home, which he cannot find at home. For a 
starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough 
to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many 
shivering children with their mother, he finds in the 



POPULAR FALLACIES 111 

depths of winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob 
to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clam- 
ours of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets 
with a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the 
trifle which he can afford to spend. He has compan- 
ions which his home denies him, for the very poor man 
has no visitors. He can look into the goings on of the 
world, and speak a little to politics. At home there 
are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All inter- 
ests, real or imaginary, all topics that should expand 
the mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy with 
general existence, are crushed in the absorbing con- 
siderations of food to be obtained for the family. 
Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless and im- 
pertinent. At home there is no larder. Here there is 
at least a show of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean 
scrap of butcher's meat before the common bars, or 
munches his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread 
and cheese with an onion, in a corner, where no one 
reflects upon his poverty, he has a sight of the sub- 
stantial joint providing for the landlord and his fam- 
ily. He takes an interest in the dressing of it ; and 
while he assists in removing the trivet from the fire, 
he feels that there is such a thing as beef and cab- 
bage, which he was beginning to forget at home. All 
this while he deserts his wife and children. But what 
wife, and what children ? Prosperous men, who object 
to this desertion, image to themselves some clean 
contented family like that which they go home to. 
But look at the countenance of the poor wives who 
follow and persecute their good man to the door of the 
public house, which he is about to enter, when some- 
thing like shame would restrain him, if stronger mis- 



178 THE ESS A YS OF ELI A 

ery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That 
face, ground by want, in which every cheerful, every 
conversable lineament has been long effaced by mis- 
ery, — is that a face to stay at home with ? is it more 
a woman, or a wild cat ? alas ! it is the face of the 
wife of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can 
smile no longer. What comforts can it share ? what 
burthens can it lighten ? Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk 
of the humble meal shared together ! But what if 
there be no bread in the cupboard ? The innocent 
prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's 
poverty. But the children of the very poor do not 
prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in 
that condition, that there is no childishness in its dwell- 
ings. Poor people, said a sensible old nurse to us 
once, do not bring up their children ; they drag them 
up. The little careless darling of the wealthier nur- 
sery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a pre- 
mature reflecting person. No one has time to dandle 
it, no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe 
it, to toss it up and down, to humour it. There is 
none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only be 
beaten. It has been prettily said that " a babe is fed 
with milk and praise." 8 But the aliment of this poor 
babe was thin, unnourishing ; the return to its little 
baby -tricks, and efforts to engage attention, bitter cease- 
less objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a 
coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses, 
it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing 
caress, the attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, 
or the cheaper off-hand contrivance to divert the child ; 
the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise im- 
pertinencies, the wholesome lies, the apt story inter- 



POPULAR FALLACIES 179 

posed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awak- 
ens the passion of young wonder. It was never sung 
to — no one ever told to it a tale of the nursery. It 
was dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. It 
had not young dreams. It broke at once into the iron 
realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor as 
any object of dalliance ; it is only another mouth to be 
fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to 
labour. It is the rival, till it can be the co-operator, 
fofr food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his 
diversion, his solace ; it never makes him young again, 
with recalling his young times. The children of the 
very poor have no young times. It makes the very 
heart to bleed to overhear the casual street-talk be- 
tween a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of 
the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the 
squalid beings which we have been contemplating. It 
is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holydays 
(fitting that age) ; of the promised sight, or play ; of 
praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and 
clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. 
The questions of the child, that should be the very 
outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with 
forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to 
be a woman, — before it was a child. It has learned 
to go to market ; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it 
murmurs ; it is knowing, acute, sharpened ; it never 
prattles. Had we not reason to say, that the home of 
the very poor is no home ? 

There is yet another home, 9 which we are constrained 
to deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home of 
the poor man wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which 
the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no home. 



180 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

It is — the house of the man that is infested with 
many visitors. May we be branded for the veriest 
churl, if we deny our heart to the many noble-hearted 
friends that at times exchange their dwelling for our 
poor roof ! It is not of guests that we complain, but 
of endless, purposeless visitants ; droppers in, as they 
are called. We sometimes wonder from what sky they 
fall. It is the very error of the position of our lodg- 
ing ; its horoscope was ill calculated, being just situate 
in a medium — a plaguy suburban midspace — fitted 
to catch idlers from town or country. We are older 
than we were, and age is easily put out of its way. 
We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and 
we cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly succeed- 
ing impertinences. At our time of life, to be alone 
sometimes is as needful as sleep. It is the refreshing 
sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of age mani- 
fest themselves in nothing more strongly, than in an 
inveterate dislike of interruption. The thing which we 
are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. We have 
neither much knowledge nor devices ; 10 but there are 
fewer in the place to which we hasten. We are not 
willingly put out of our way, even at a game of nine- 
pins. While youth was, we had vast reversions in time 
future ; we are reduced to a present pittance, and 
obliged to economise in that article. We bleed away 
our moments now as hardly as our ducats. We can- 
not bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted 
into by moths. We are willing to barter our good time 
with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. 
Herein is the distinction between the genuine guest 
and the visitant. This latter takes your good time, and 
gives you his bad in exchange. The guest is domestic 



POPULAR FALLACIES 181 

to you as your good cat, or household bird ; the visit- 
ant is your fly, that flaps in at your window, and out 
again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturbance, and 
victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of life begin 
to move heavily. We cannot concoct our food with 
interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must 
be solitary. With difficulty we can eat before a guest ; 
and never understood what the relish of public feast- 
ing meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion fair 
play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a visit- 
ant stops the machine. There is a punctual generation 
who time their calls to the precise commencement of 
your dining-hour — not to eat — but to see you eat. 
Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we feel 
that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others again 
show their genius, as we have said, in knocking the 
moment you have just sat down to a book. They have 
a peculiar compassionate sneer, with which they " hope 
that they do not interrupt your studies." Though 
they flutter off the next moment, to carry their imper- 
tinences to the nearest student that they can call their 
friend, the tone of the book is spoiled ; we shut the 
leaves, and, with Dante's lovers, 11 read no more that 
day. It were well if the effect of intrusion were sim- 
ply co-extensive with its presence ; but it mars all the 
good hours afterwards. These scratches in appearance 
leave an orifice that closes not hastily. " It is a prosti- 
tution of the bravery of friendship," says worthy 
Bishop Taylor, 12 " to spend it upon impertinent 
people, who are, it may be, loads to their families, but 
can never ease my loads." This is the secret of their 
gaddings, their visits, and morning calls. They too 
have homes, which are — no homes. 



182 THE ESSA YS OF ELIA 

THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK 

At what precise minute that little airy musician 
doffs his night gear, and prepares to tune up his 
unseasonable matins, we are not naturalists enough to 
determine. But for a mere human gentleman — that 
has no orchestra business to call him from his warm 
bed to such preposterous exercises — we take ten, or 
half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christ- 
mas solstice), to be the very earliest hour, at which he 
can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think 
of it, we say ; for to do it in earnest, requires another 
half -hour's good consideration. Not but there are 
pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and such like gawds, 
abroad in the world, in summer time especially, some 
hours before what we have assigned ; which a gentle- 
man may see, as they say, only for getting up. But, 
having been tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to 
assist at those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity 
abated. We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's 
courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We hold 
the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them 
upon such observances ; which have in them, besides, 
something Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never 
anticipated our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 
'tis called), to go a journey, or upon a foolish whole 
day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the long 
hours after in listlessness and headaches ; Nature her- 
self sufficiently declaring her sense of our presump- 
tion in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses 
by the measures of that celestial and sleepless traveller. 
We deny not that there is something sprightly and 
vigorous, at the outset especially, in these break-of-day 



POPULAR FALLACIES 183 

excursions. It is flattering to get the start of a lazy 
world ; to conquer death by proxy in his image. But 
the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us ; and we 
pay usually in strange qualms, before night falls, the 
penalty of the unnatural inversion. Therefore, while 
the busy part of mankind are fast huddling on their 
clothes, are already up and about their occupations, 
content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale ; 
we choose to linger a-bed, and digest our dreams. It 
is-the very time to re-combine the wandering images, 
which night in a confused mass presented ; to snatch 
them from forgetfulness ; to shape, and mould them. 
Some people have no good of their dreams. Like fast 
feeders, they gulp them too grossly, to taste them 
curiously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone 
vision ; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter 
phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the 
sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to drag into day-light a 
struggling and half- vanishing night-mare ; to handle 
and examine the terrors, or the airy solaces. We have 
too much respect for these spiritual communications, 
to let them go so lightly. We are not so stupid, or 
so careless, as that Imperial forgetter 13 of his dreams, 
that we should need a seer to remind us of the form 
of them. They seem to- us to have as much significance 
as our waking concerns ; or rather to import us more 
nearly, as more nearly we approach by years to the 
shadowy world, whither we are hastening. We have 
shaken hands with the world's business ; we have done 
with it ; we have discharged ourself of it. Why 
should we get up ? we have neither suit to solicit, nor 
affairs to manage. The drama has shut in upon us at 
the fourth act. We have nothing here to expect, but 



184 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

in a short time a sick bed, and a dismissal. We 
delight to anticipate death by such shadows as night 
affords. We are already half acquainted with ghosts. 
We were never much in the world. Disappointment 
early struck a dark veil between us and its dazzling 
illusions. Our spirits showed grey before our hairs. 
The mighty changes of the world already appear as 
but the vain stuff out of which dramas are composed. 
We have asked no more of life than what the mimic 
images in play-houses present us with. Even those 
types have waxed fainter. Our clock appears to have 
struck. We are superannuated. In this dearth of 
mundane satisfaction, we contract politic alliances 
with shadows. It is good to have friends at court. 
The abstracted media of dreams seem no ill introduc- 
tion to that spiritual presence, upon which, in no long 
time, we expect to be thrown. We are trying to know 
a little of the usages of that colony ; to learn the lan- 
guage, and the faces we shall meet with there, that we 
may be the less awkward at our first coming among 
them. We willingly call a phantom our fellow, as know- 
ing we shall soon be of their dark companionship. 
Therefore, we cherish dreams. We try to spell in 
them the alphabet of the invisible world ; and think 
we know already, how it shall be with us. Those un- 
couth shapes, which, while we clung to flesh and blood, 
affrighted us, have become familiar. We feel atten- 
uated into their meagre essences, and have given the 
hand of half-way approach to incorporeal being. We 
once thought life to be something ; but it has unac- 
countably fallen from us before its time. Therefore 
we choose to dally with visions. The sun has no pur- 
poses of ours to light us to. Why should we get up ? 



POPULAR FALLACIES 185 

THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB 

We could never quite understand the philosophy 
of this arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors 
in sending us for instruction to these woolly bedfellows. 
A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but to 
shut his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found 
out long sixes. — Hail candle-light ! without disparage- 
ment to sun or moon, the kindliest luminary of the 
three — if we may not rather style thee their ra- 
diant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! — We love 
to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candle- 
light. They are everybody's sun and moon. This is 
our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, what 
savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, 
wintering in caves and unillumined fastnesses ! They 
must have lain about and grumbled at one another in 
the dark. What repartees could have passed, when 
vou must have felt about for a smile, and handled 
a neighbour's cheek to be sure that he understood it ? 
This accounts for the seriousness of the elder poetry. 
It has a sombre cast (try Hesiod 14 or Ossian 15 ), 
derived from the tradition of those unlantern'd nights. 
Jokes came in with candles. We wonder how they 
saw to pick up a pin, if they had any. How did they 
sup ? what a melange of chance carving they must 
have made of it ! — here one had got the leg of a goat, 
when he wanted a horse's shoulder — there another 
had dipt his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild honey, 
when he meditated right mare's milk. There is neither 
good eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, even in 
these civilised times, has never experienced this, when 
at some economic table he has commenced dining after 



186 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

dusk, and waited for the flavour till the lights came ? 
The senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. Can 
you tell pork from veal in the dark? or distinguish 
Sherris from pure Malaga ? Take away the candle 
from the smoking man ; by the glimmering of the left 
ashes, he knows that he is still smoking, but he knows 
it only by an inference ; till the restored light, coming 
in aid of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the full 
aroma. Then how he redoubles his puffs ! how he 
burnishes ! — There is absolutely no such thing as 
reading, but by a candle. We have tried the affecta- 
tion of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry 
arbours ; but it was labour thrown away. Those gay 
motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teas- 
ing, like many coquettes, that will have you ail to their 
self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the mid- 
night taper, the writer digests his meditations. By the 
same light, we must approach to their perusal, if we 
would catch the flame, the odour. It is a mockery, all 
that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true 
poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are 
abstracted works — 

" Things that were born, when none but the still night, 
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes." 16 

Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, 
the crude material ; but for the fine shapings, the true 
turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must 
be content to hold their inspiration of the candle. The 
mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the 
domestic hearth, goes out in the sun-shine. Night and 
silence call out the starry fancies. Milton's Morning 
Hymn in Paradise, 17 we would hold a good wager, was 



POPULAR FALLACIES 187 

penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich description of 
a sun-rise 18 smells decidedly of the taper. Even our- 
selves, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our 
best measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) not 
unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, 
" blessing the doors ; " 19 or the wild sweeps of wind 
at midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we 
have yet attempted, courts our endeavours. We would 
indite something about the Solar System. — Betty, 
bring the candles. 



NOTES 

Any edition of the Essays of Elia to-day must acknowledge 
its indebtedness for explanatory matter to the editions of Canon 
Ainger (1883) and E. V. Lucas (1903). Mr. Lucas's edition 
ought, above all others, to be accessible to students, not only 
for the sake of its full annotation, but for new information con- 
cerning the Lambs there brought to light, for its most zealous 
tracing of quotations used by Lamb, and for its interesting 
reproductions of title-pages and of pictures alluded to by Lamb. 
In this text Canon Ainger's notes are marked by the initial, 
Mr. Lucas's by the full name, while Lamb's own notes appear 
at the foot of the text pages. 

THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

{.London Magazine, August, 1820.) 

Note 1. Charles Lamb left Christ's Hospital in the year 
1789, at the age of fourteen, and at some date within the next 
two years he obtained a situation in the South-Sea House. His 
father's employer, Samuel Salt, the Bencher of the Inner Tem- 
ple, was a Deputy-Governor of the South-Sea House at the 
time, and it was doubtless by the influence of this kind friend 
that the appointment was obtained. Charles's elder brother, 
John, was already a clerk in the "office. In the Royal Calendar 
for 1792, John Lamb's name appears as holding the position 
of Deputy-Accountant. Other of the names mentioned by Lamb 
in this Essay are also found in the official records of the day, — 
John Tipp, on whose promotion to the office of Accountant 
(as "John Tipp, Esq."), John Lamb succeeded to the post just 
mentioned; W. Evans, Deputy-Cashier in 1791; Thomas Tame, 
Deputy-Cashier in 1793; and Richard Plumer, Deputy-Secre- 
tary in 1800. Lamb's fondness for gratuitous mystification is 
thus curiously illustrated in the insinuation towards the close 
of the Essay that the names he has recorded are fictitious, after 
all. Lamb's old colleague, Elia, whose name he borrowed, has 
not (as far as I am aware) been yet traced in the annals of the 
office. But he probably held, like Lamb himself, a very subor- 
dinate position. 

A full account of the famous South-Sea Bubble will be found 
in Lord Stanhope's History, and also in Chambers's Book of 
Days. For an account of the constitution of the Company at 
the end of the last century, Hughson's Walks through London 
(1805) may be consulted. He says: "Notwithstanding the 
terms of the charter by which we are to look upon this Com- 



190 NOTES 

pany as merchants, it is observable that they never carried 
on any considerable trade, and now they have no trade. They 
only receive interest for their capital which is in the hands of 
the Government, and £8000 out of the Treasury towards the 
expense attending the management of their affairs, which is done 
by a Governor, Sub-Governor, Deputy-Governor, and twenty- 
one Directors, annually chosen on the 6th of February by a 
majority of votes." Pennant (who is referred to in this Essay, 
and wrote in 1790) says: ''In this (Threadneedle) Street also 
stands the South-Sea House, the place in which the Company 
did business, when it had any to transact." A. 

Note 2. Bank of England. 

Note 3. An inn in Bishopsgate Street, from which the north- 
bound coaches started. 

Note 4. Northern suburbs where rents were low. 

Note 5. Queen Anne (1702-1714); and George I (1714- 
1727), George II (1727-1760). 

Note 6. Cf. Milton's Comus, 1. 398. 

Note 7. This is the name which Spenser (Faerie Queene, II, 
vii) and Milton (Paradise Lost, I, 678) give to Riches. 

Note 8. The giant plot of Guy Fawkes (Guido Vaux) to 
blow up the house of Parliament, November 5, 1605. 

Note 9. Cambria was the old Latin name for Wales. 

Note 10. The English fops of the late eighteenth century 
were called Maccaronies. 

Note 11. Cf. 1 Henry IV, I, ii. 

Note 12. A coffee-house on Fleet Street, now Anderton's 
Hotel. 

Note 13. Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), a Welsh antiquary. 

Note 14. Formerly in a corner of St. James's Park, London; 
filled up in 1770. Fair Rosamond was Jane Clifford, mistress 
of Henry II. 

Note 15. Public gardens shaded by the mulberries planted 
by King James I, and much frequented by fashion in the seven- 
teenth century. They occupied the site of Buckingham Palace. 

Note 16. Cheapside. Water was brought here underground 
from Paddington. 

Note 17. Hogarth, William (1697-1764), English painter. 
The scene of his " Noon" is a Huguenot chapel (now St. Mary's) 
in Hog Lane. 

Note 18. Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), who, revoking 
the Edict of Nantes, drove thousands of Protestant families 
from France. 

Note 19. A locality long notorious for poverty and crime. 
So called from a column with seven sun dials, which marked the 
meeting of seven streets. 

Note 20. The entrance to the Houses of Parliament. 

Note 21. Cf. Paradise Lost, VIII, 454. 

Note 22. James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater (1689- 
1716), supported the Pretender and was beheaded in London 
in 1716. 



NOTES 191 

Note 23. Honor and consolation. Cf. Virgil's Mneid, X, 859. 

Note 24. Quoted from a passage in Fielding's Joseph An- 
drews, except that for Fielding's " schoolmaster " Lamb sub- 
stitutes "accountant." 

Note 25. Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, III, 17. 

Note 26. The Midas of mythology, in a musical contest 
between Pan and Apollo, made the unpardonable mistake of 
adjudging the prize to Pan, and was punished by having his ears 
turned to asses' ears. 

Note 27. Cf. 

" Rightly to be great 
Is not to stir without great argument, 
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 
When honour 's at the stake." Hamlet, IV, iv. 

'Note 28. Cf. 

"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death." Macbeth, V, v. 

Note 29. Henry Man (1747-1799), author of many light 
trifles in verse and prose, and of one or two books. The two 
"forgotten volumes" — Miscellaneous Works in Verse and 
Prose of the late Henry Man, London, 1802 — are now before 
me. They contain a variety of light and amusing papers in 
verse and prose. The humour of them, however, is naturally 
still more out of date now than in Lamb's day. One of the 
epigrams found there may be said to have become classical, 
— that upon the two Earls (Spencer and Sandwich) who in- 
vented respectively "half a coat" and "half a dinner." Henry 
Man was Deputy-Secretary in 1793. A. 

Note 30. A section of London where Milton lived (1646-1 647) 
and wrote some of his shorter poems. Cf. Troilus and Cressida, 
III, 3. 

Note 31. Two London newspapers of the eighteenth century. 

Note 32. All the following names are connected with two 
struggles, — the American War of Independence, and John 
Wilkes's struggle with Parliament: William Pitt, Earl of Chat- 
ham (1708-1778); William Petty, Earl of Shelburne (1737- 
1805); Charles Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham (1730- 
1782); William Howe, commander of the British forces in the 
American war (1729-1814); John Burgoyne, the British com- 
mander who surrendered (1777) to General Gates at Saratoga (c. 
1722-1792); Sir Henry Clinton, who succeeded General Howe as 
commander-in-chief of the British army in 1778 (1738-1795). 

Note 33. Augustus Keppel, an English admiral (1725-1786); 
John Wilkes, English politician, editor of the North Briton 
(1727-1797); John Sawbridge (c. 1732-1795), made lord mayor 
of London in 1775; William Bull (1738-1814), independent 
minister, friend of Cowper; John Dunning, Lord Ashburton 
(1731-1783); Charles Pratt, Earl of Camden (c. 1714-1794); 
Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond, a champion of the Ameri- 
can colonies (1735-1806). 



192 NOTES 

Note 34. Lamb had a special interest in the family bearing 
this name, because his grandmother, Mary Field, was for more 
than half a century housekeeper at the Dower House of the 
family, Blakesware in Hertfordshire. The present Mr. Plumer, 
of Ailerton, Totness, a grandson of Richard Plumer of the 
South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in the tradition here 
recorded as to his grandfather's origin. He believes that though 
the links are missing, Richard Plumer was descended in regular 
line from the Baronet, Sir Walter Plumer, who died at the end 
of the seventeenth century. Lamb's memory has failed him 
here in one respect. The "Bachelor Uncle," Walter Plumer, 
uncle of William Plumer of Blakesware, was most certainly 
not a bachelor (see the pedigree of the family in Cussan's Hert- 
fordshire). Lamb is further inaccurate as to the connection 
of this Walter Plumer with the affair of the franks. A refer- 
ence to Johnson's Life of Cave will show that it was Cave, and 
not Plumer, who was summoned before the House of Com- 
mons. Walter Plumer, Member for Oldborough and Appleby, 
had given a frank to the Duchess of Marlborough, which had 
been challenged by Cave, who held the post of Clerk of the 
Franks in the House of Commons. For this, Cave was cited 
before the House, as a Breach of Privilege. 

In the passage on John Tipp, Lamb, speaking of his fine suite 
of rooms in Threadneedle Street, adds, "I know not who is 
the occupier of them now." When the Essay first appeared 
In the London Magazine, the note in brackets was appended. 
Thus we learn that John Lamb was still, in 1820, occupying 
rooms in the old building. A. 

Note 35. "Maynard hang'd himself" (Lamb's "Key"). Mr. 
T. Maynard was chief clerk of the Old Annuities and Three Per 
Cents from 1788 to 1793. His name does not appear in the 
almanacs of the day after this date. A. 

Note 36. Cf. As You Like It, II, vii. 

Note 37. As a matter of fact they are not "fantastic," but 
are to be found in several different records. 

Note 38. The Induction to The Taming of the Shrew says: — 

"Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid, 
Nor no such men as you have reckon'd up, 
As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece, 
And Peter Turph, and Henry Pimpernell, 
And twenty more such names and men as these 
Which never were, nor no man ever saw." 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS 

AGO 

(London Magazine, November, 1820.) 

Note 1. The first collected edition of Lamb's Prose and 
Verse appeared in the year 1818, published by C. and J. Oilier. 
Among other papers it contained one entitled Recollections of 



NOTES 193 

Christ's Hospital. The Essay was a reprint from the Gentleman's 
Magazine for June, 1813, where it originally owed its appear- 
ance to an alleged abuse of the presentation system in force at 
the Blue Coat School. 

This earlier article on Christ's Hospital had been written in 
a serious and genuine vein of enthusiasm for the value and 
dignity of the old Foundation. Lamb now seems to have re- 
membered that there were other aspects of schoolboy life un- 
der its shelter that might be profitably dealt with. The " poor 
friendless boy," in whose character he now writes, was his old 
schoolfellow Coleridge, and the general truth of the sketch is 
shown by Coleridge's own reference to his schooldays in the 
early chapters of his Biographia Literaria. ''In my friendless 
wanderings on our leave-days (for I was an orphan, and had 
sgarce any connections in London), highly was I delighted if 
any passenger, especially if he were dressed in black, would 
enter into conversation with me." A. 

Lamb's love of mystification shows itself in this Essay in 
many forms. "Sweet Calne in Wiltshire" is a quite gratuitous 
substitution for Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, the home after 
which young Coleridge did actually yearn. Coleridge did, how- 
ever, reside for a time at Calne in later life. Moreover, as will 
be seen, the disguise of identity with Coleridge is dropped alto- 
gether towards the close of the Essay. The general account of 
the school here given it is interesting to compare with that 
given by Leigh Hunt in his autobiography. A. 

Note 2. Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 

Note 3. Randal Norris. 

Note 4. There were originally two banian (or banyan) days 
— later, only one — in the British navy upon which the sail- 
ors were allowed to have no meat. The custom no longer 
exists. 

Note 5. Horse flesh. 

Note 6. The aunt, Sarah Lamb. 

"I have not forgot 
How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet 
A prating schoolboy : I have not forgot 
The busy joy on that important day, 
When, childlike, the poor wanderer was content 
To leave the bosom of parental love. 
His childhood's play-place, and his early home, 
For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand, 
Hard, uncouth tasks, and schoolboy's scanty fare. 
How did thine eyes peruse him round and round 
And hardly knew him in his yellow coats, 
Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue." 

Lamb's Lines written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral. . 

Note 7. The Royal Menagerie now in Regent's Park was 
formerly kept in the Tower. 

Note 8. It was under Samuel Salt's roof that John Lamb 
and his family lived, and as the presentation to Christ's was 



194 NOTES 

obtained from a friend of Salt's, Lamb considers it fair to speak 
of the old Bencher as the actual benefactor. A. 

Note 9. Hodges (Lamb's "Key"). 

Note 10. Lamb speaks of this friend occasionally in his let- 
ters, but nothing is known of him beyond his name. 

Note 11. This horse, called Incitatus, was fed from a golden 
manger, and one of Caligula's whims was to have him invested 
with consulship. 

Note 12. Cf. Joshua vi, 13-16. 

Note 13. John Perry, steward from 1761 to 1785. 

Note 14. A description of the hall may be found in Leigh 
Hunt's Autobiography, Chap. iii. 

Note 15. A line apparently extemporized by Lamb as a 
translation of the passage in Virgil {Aneid, I, 464) to which 
he refers, " animum pictura pascit inani." A. 

Note 16. As usual, a new quotation formed out of Lamb's 
general recollection of an old one. He had in his mind, no 
doubt, a passage in Antony and Cleopatra (Act I, Sc. iv): — 

".It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh 
Which some did die to look on." ^4. 

Note 17. Perry was steward in Lamb's day (see the former 
Essay on Christ's Hospital). Leigh Hunt says of his successor: 
"The name of the steward, a thin stiff man of invincible 
formality of demeanour, admirably fitted to render encroach- 
ment impossible, was Hathaway. We of the grammar school 
used to call him 'the Yeoman,' on account of Shakespeare hav- 
ing married the daughter of a man of that name, designated 
as 'a substantial yeoman.'" A. 

Note 18. Bedlam is a corruption of Bethlehem; the hospital 
of St. Mary of Bethlehem, founded in the thirteenth century, 
was afterward used as an asylum for the insane. 

Note 19. Howard's statue stands in St. Paul's Cathedral. 
Cf. Merchant of Venice, I, iii. 

Note 20. Literally, an act of faith (Portuguese). The term 
was applied in Spain and Portugal to the ceremony of burning 
heretics. 

Note 21. Blue uniforms. Cf. Spenser's "watchet mantles." 

Note 22. Cf. The Inferno, Cantos xxviii-xxx. 

Note 23. Extreme punishments. 

Note 24. The name San Benito was given to these garments 
because they were of the cut of those worn by the order of St. 
Benedict. 

Note 25. Became upper master of Christ's in 1777. For 
the better side of Boyer's qualifications as a teacher, see Cole- 
ridge's Biographia Literaria, the passage beginning, "At school 
I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though 
at the same time a very severe master." Elsewhere Coleridge 
entirely confirms Lamb's and Leigh Hunt's accounts of Boyer's 
violent temper, and severe discipline. Lamb never reached 
the position of Grecian, but it is the tradition in Christ's Hos- 



NOTES 195 

pital that he was under Boyer's instruction some time before 
leaving school. A. 

Note 26. Some charming additional traits in this character, 
entirely confirming Lamb's account, will be found in Leigh 
Hunt's autobiography. "A man of a more handsome incom- 
petence for his situation perhaps did not exist. He came late 
of a morning; went away soon in the afternoon; and used to 
walk up and down, languidly bearing his cane, as if it were a 
lily, and hearing our eternal Dominuses and As in praesentis 
with an air of ineffable endurance. Often he did not hear at 
all. It was a joke with us when any of our friends came to the 
door, and we asked his permission to go to them, to address him 
with some preposterous question wide of the mark; to which 
he used to assent. We would say, for instance, 'Are you not 
a great fool, sir?' or 'Isn't your daughter a pretty girl?' to 
which he would reply, 'Yes, child.' When he condescended 
to hit us with the cane, he made a face as if he were taking 
physic." A. 

Note 27. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, III, ii. 

Note 28. Cf. Ben Jonson's Lines on Shakespeare. 

Note 29. The game is played by two, — one, the French, 
and the other, the English, — on a piece of paper covered with 
dots. Each player closes his eyes and dashes his pencil across 
the paper. The dots thus crossed out represent the number of 
the enemy which each has annihilated. 

Note 30. Rousseau and John Locke included in their theories 
of education the modern principle that the natural disposition 
of the child should be considered in his development. 

Note 31. A Roman fabulist of the first century, a. d. 

Note 32. The slaves of the Spartan state, who were some- 
times exhibited drunken as a warning to the Spartan youths. 

Note 33. The pupils of Pythagoras, the Samite (c. 582-500 
b. c.)i banded themselves together by vows to keep all their 
discussions, discoveries, etc., from the outside world, and not to 
speak of them until they had listened to his lectures for five 
years. 

Note 34. Cf. Judges vi, 36-38. 

Note 35. Cf. Cowley's The Complaint. 

Note 36. Cf. 1 Henry IV, I, ii. 

Note 37. An allusion to Virgil's JEneid, VI, 548 ff. 

Note 38. Cf. Milton's Lycidas, 11. 123, 124. 

"And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw." 

Note 39. An allusion to Horace's Satires, I, vii, 34, 35. 

Note 40. An allusion to Terence's Andrea, V, ii, 16. 

Note 41. An allusion to Terence's Adelphi, III, iii, 74. 

Note 42. Force enough. 

Note 43. Raging madness. From Catullus, Attis, 38(?). 

Note 44. In Biographia Literaria and in Table Talk. 

Note 45. For an amusing account of the origin of this 



196 NOTES 

periodical, see Mozley's Reminiscences of Oriel College, vol. ii, 
addenda. A. 

Note 46. The term First Grecian denominated two picked 
scholars who were sent up to Cambridge every year with the 
understanding that they should take orders. 

Note 47. Dr. Trollope, who succeeded Boyer as head- 

Note 48*. Thornton (Lamb's "Key"). A. 

Note 49. The infant realm. Cf. Virgil's JEneid, I, 562. 

Note 50. Bishop Jewel, of Salisbury (1522-1571) and Rich- 
ard Hooker (c. 1533-1600). 

Note 51. "Scott, died in Bedlam" (Lamb's "Key"). A. 

Note 52. "Maunde, dismiss'd school" (Lamb's "Key"). A. 

Note 53. Adapted from Matthew Prior's Carmen Saeculare 
for 1700 (stanza viii) : — 

"Janus, mighty deity. 
Be kind, and as thy searching eye 
Does our modern story trace, 
Finding some of Stuart's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by." A. 

Note 54. Pico, Count of Mirandola (1463-1494), was a tal- 
ented philosopher and humanist of the Italian Renaissance; 
friend of Lorenzo de' Medici. 

Note 55. Neo-Platonic philosophers of the third century. 

Note 56. Charles Valentine Le Grice and a younger brother 
of the name of Samuel were Grecians, and prominent members 
of the school in Lamb's day. They were from Cornwall. Charles 
became a clergyman, and held a living in his native county. 
Samuel went into the army, and died in the West Indies. It 
was he who was staying in London in the autumn of 1796, and 
showed himself a true friend to the Lambs at the season of the 
mother's death. Lamb writes to Coleridge, "Sam Le Grice, 
who was then in town, was with me the three or four first days, 
and was as a brother to me; gave up every hour of his time to 
the very hurting of his health and spirits in constant attendance, 
and humouring my poor father; talked with him, read to him, 
played at cribbage with him." He was a "mad wag," accord- 
ing to Leigh Hunt, who tells some pleasant anecdotes of him, 
but must have been a good-hearted fellow. " Le Grice the elder 
was a wag," adds Hunt, " like his brother, but more staid. He 
went into the church as he ought to do, and married a rich 
widow. He published a translation, abridged, of the cele- 
brated pastoral of Longus; and report at school made him the 
author of a little anonymous tract on the Art of Poking the 
Fire." A. 

Note 57. This is Fuller's account of the wit combats be- 
tween Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. A. 

Note 58. Handsome Nireus, called the handsomest man 
among the Greeks before Troy. Cf. Iliad, II, 673. 

Note 59. The latter of these was named Favell, also a Gre- 
cian in the school. These two, according to Leigh Hunt, when 



NOTES . 197 

at the university wrote to the Duke of York to ask for com- 
missions in the army. "The Duke good-naturedly sent them." 
Favell was killed in the Peninsula. His epitaph will be found 
on a tablet in Great St. Andrew's Church, Cambridge: "Sam- 
uel, a Captain in the 61st Regiment, having been engaged in 
the expedition to Egypt, afterwards served in the principal 
actions in the Peninsula, and fell whilst heading his men to 
the charge in the Battle of Salamanca, July 21, 1812." We shall 
meet with him again, under a different initial, in the Essay on 
Poor Relations. A. 

Note 60. Frederick William Franklin. 

Note 61. Marmaduke Thompson. 

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

{London Magazine, February, 1821.) 

There is probably no evidence existing as to the original of 
Mrs. Battle. Several of Lamb's commentators have endeav- 
oured to prove her identity with Mary Field, Lamb's grand-, 
mother, so long resident with the Plumer family; the sole fact 
common to them being that Lamb represents Mrs. Battle (in 
the essay on Bldkesmoor) as having died at Blakesware, where 
also Mrs. Field ended her days. But any one who will read, 
after the present essay, Lamb's indisputably genuine and se- 
rious verses on Mrs. Field's death ( The Grandame) will feel that 
to have transformed her into this "gentlewoman born." with 
the fine "last century countenance," would have been little 
short of a mauvaise plaisanterie, of which Lamb was not likely 
to have been guilty. A . 

Mrs. Battle was probably, in real life, to a large extent Sarah 
Burney, the wife of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's friend, 
and the centre of the whist-playing set to which he belonged. 
Lucas. 

Leigh Hunt, reprinting this essay in the London Journal, 
presented it as follows: " Here followeth, gentle reader, the im- 
mortal record of Mrs. Battle and her whist; a game which the 
author, as thou wilt see, wished that he could play forever; and 
accordingly, in the deathless pages of his wit, forever will he 
plav it." 

Note 1. Cf. Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Canto iii. 

Note 2. Mr. Bowles. — William Lisle Bowles brought out 
his edition of Pope in 1807. A. 

.Note 3. The ace of spades. 

Note 4. In this game of ombre, played by four, one may, 
if he has a very good hand, play alone sans prendre, i. e., with- 
out choosing a partner. To make a vole is to take all the tricks. 
Therefore sans prendre vole means to take single-handed every 
trick. 

Note 5. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), Italian states- 
man and author, whose name has become a synonym for 



198 NOTES 

strategy and cunning. Lamb refers here to his Istorie fior en- 
tine (Florentine history). 

Note 6. Sir Anthony Vandyke (1599-1641), Flemish por- 
trait painter who lived chiefly in England after 1632 and was 
court painter to Charles I. 

Note 7. Paul Potter (1625-1654), Dutch animal painter. 

Note 8. Pope's phrases in The Rape of the Lock. Pam is the 
knave of clubs. 

Note 9. Cf. "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silver- 
smith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small 
gain unto the craftsmen." Acts xix, 24. 

Note 10. In The South-Sea House. 

Note 11. Bridget Elia. — The name by which Lamb always 
indicates his sister in this series of essays. A. Cf. note 6, Old 
China. 

Note 12. Won all the cards from her. 

A CHAPTER ON EARS 

{London Magazine, March, 1821.) 

Note 1. Lamb's indifference to music is one of the best- 
known features of his personality. Compare the admirably 
humorous verses, "Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Com- 
posers," beginning — 

".Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 
Just as the whim bites ; for my part 
I do not care a farthing candle 
For either of them, or for Handel, — 
Cannot a man live free and easy 
Without admiring Pergolesi ? 
Or through the world with comfort go 
That never heard of Dr. Blow ? " A. 

11 Lamb was not so utterly without ear as he states. Crabb 
Robinson in his diary records more than once that Lamb 
hummed tunes, and Barron Field, in the memoir of Lamb con- 
tributed by him to the Annual Biography and Obituary for 1836, 
mentions his love for certain beautiful airs, among them Kent's 
' O that I had wings like a dove ' (mentioned in this essay) , and 
Handel's ' From mighty kings.' Lamb says that it was Braham 
who awakened a love of music in him." Lucas. 

Note 2. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, V, i. 

Note 3. Phrases in the songs in Artaxerxes, the first play 
which Lamb ever saw. Cf . the essay My First Play. 

Note 4. See note 8, Dream Children : A Reverie. 

Note 5. Doubtless Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, the 
well-known musical critic of that day (1777-1858). A. 

Note 6. Baralipton is a term given in the Memoria Technica 
to the first mode of the first figure of the syllogism. Lucas. 

Note 7. Jubal was, according to Genesis, a son of Lamech 
and the inventor of string and wind instruments. Cf. "And 



NOTES 199 

his brother's name was Jubal : he was the father of all such as 
handle the harp and organ." Genesis iv, 21. 

Note 8. An allusion to Hogarth's picture of the musician 
driven mad by street noises. 

Note 9. Cf . note 17, The South-Sea House. 

Note 10. From a stanza in the original draft of Words- 
worth's Peter Bell. The stanza was omitted in all editions of 
the poem after the first (1819). 

Note 11. Cf. Revelation x, 10. 

Note 12. Burton, Robert (1577-1640), the author of The 
Anatomy of Melancholy. 

Note 13. Delightful madness. Horace, Odes, III, 4. 

Note 14. A most pleasing hallucination of the mind. Horace, 
Epistles, II, 2. 

Note 15. Rustic bashfulness. Cicero, Litter ae ad Familiam, 
V,12. 

Note 16. Vincent Novello, the well-known organist and com- 
poser, father of Mile. Clara Novello and Mrs. Cowden Clarke 
(1781-1861). A. 

Note 17. Inaccurately quoted from The Compleat Angler, 
Part I, Chap. iv. 

Note 18. Cf. 1 Corinthians xv, 48. 

Note 19. Arion was the Greek poet (c. 700 b. c.) who, 
according to the legend, was thrown overboard by the sailors 
when he was returning from a musical contest in Sicily in which 
he had been victor. But the dolphins and Tritons, charmed by 
his songs, bore him safely to land. 

Note 20. Haydn, Joseph (1732-1809); Mozart, Wolfgang 
(1756 7 1791); Beethoven, Ludwig von (1770-1827): celebrated 
Austrian composers. 

Note 21. Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750), celebrated 
German composer of church music. 

Note 22. The heretic's hammer, — the Latin title of a work 
by Johann Faber (1478-1541), an opponent of Luther. 

Note 23. Marcion was a noted heretic of the second century, 
who revised the gospel of St. Luke and ten of Paul's epistles, 
and based his beliefs upon those as the only inspired Scripture. 

Note 24. The Ebionites (second century) denied the di- 
vinity of Jesus and rejected all of St. Paul's writings. 

Note 25. Cerinthus (end of first century) admitted Christian- 
ity, but tried to incorporate with it Jewish and Oriental tenets. 

Note 26. Cf. Revelation xx, 8. 

WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 

(London Magazine, October, 1821.) 

The student of Lamb should read with this essay the story 
of "The Witch Aunt" in Mrs. Leicester's School, which Lamb 
wrote in 1808. 

Note 1. Witches were believed to make wax figures of their 



200 NOTES 

victims, and while they tortured them the real persons faded 
and pined away. 

Note 2. Cf. "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, 
but the goats on the left." Matthew xxv, 33. 

Note 3. Cf. The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, 11-14. 

Note 4. Cf. The Tempest, I, ii. 

Note 5. In Spenser's Faerie Queene Sir Guyon is the good 
knight of Temperance. Cf. Book II, Canto xi, for this refer- 
ence. 

Note 6. Stackhouse, Thomas (1677-1752). His work was 
entitled A New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning 
of the World to the Establishment of Christianity (1737). It 
was fully illustrated. Lamb says elsewhere that he never for- 
got the quaint cut of the elephant and the camel in the ark, 
and that the plate of the Witch of Endor was the bugbear of 
his childhood. Lucas's edition of Essays of Elia reprints this 
illustration on p. 353. 

Note 7. Cf. 1 Samuel xxviii. 

Note 8. In Book I of the Faerie Queene Spenser represents 
St. George, the patron saint of England, in the character of the 
Red Cross Knight, who slays the monster Error, as alluded to 
here. Cf. Book I, Canto i. 

Note 9. From "The Author's Abstract of Melancholy," pre- 
fixed to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. A. 

Note 10. _ Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest boy. This 
passage is interesting as having provoked Southey's violent 
attack on Leigh Hunt and his principles, in the Quarterly Re- 
view for January, 1823. A. 

In this article Southey attacked Leigh Hunt as an unbeliever 
who was not honest with himself, and who could not, after pro- 
fessing lack of faith in religion, rid himself entirely of the ele- 
ment of fear. As proof of this he cited this passage of Lamb's, 
and went on to criticise severely the lack of a religious train- 
ing in Hunt's children. Lamb was sensitive about the matter, 
and wrote, " Southey has attacked Elia on the score of infidelity. 
. . . He might have spared an old friend such a construction 
of a few careless flights that meant no harm to religion." Later 
Lamb in an open letter defended himself and Hunt, and when 
he found Southey grieved in his turn, he apologized, and the 
friendship was resoldered. 

Note 11. Cf. Macbeth, V, iii. 

Note 12. The three sisters who turned to stone all those who 
looked upon them. Cf. Paradise Lost, II, 628. 

Note 13. The Hydra, slain by Hercules, was the many-headed 
serpent of the marshes in Argolis. 

Note 14. The Chimaera, slain by Bellerophon, was a fire- 
breathing monster of Lycia. 

Note 15. Cf. note 7~ Grace Before Meat. 

Note 16. From Spenser's Epithalamion, 11. 343, 344. A. 

Note 17. See Lamb's letter to Manning, in 1802, describing 
his and Mary's visit to Coleridge at Keswick. " We got in in the 



NOTES 201 

evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst 
of a gorgeous sunset, which transmuted all the mountains into 
colours. We thought we had got into Fairyland. . . . Such an 
impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do 
I suppose that I can ever again." A. 

Note 18. Cf . Wordsworth's " the inward eye " in The Daffodils. 

Note 19. A peak in the Lake District of England, near 
Ambleside. 

Note 20. Cf. Coleridge's Kubla Khan, 1. 3. 

Note 21. The pseudonym of Bryan Waller Proctor (1787- 
1874), poet and prose-writer. Lamb refers here to his poem, 
A Dream. 

Note 22. The wife of one of the kings of Thebes, who threw 
herself into the sea to escape from her mad husband and was 
changed into a sea goddess. In his Adventures of Ulysses Lamb 
describes beautifully her rescue of Ulysses. 

Note 23. In the borough of Lambeth, south of the Thames. 

VALENTINE'S DAY 

(Leigh Hunt's Indicator, February 14, 1821.) 

Note 1. A Christian martyr of the reign of Claudius (third 
century). Probably the custom of sending love missives in 
that day did not originate from any association with St. Valen- 
tine, but from a Roman practice connected with the worship of 
Juno on this day. 

Note 2. High priest of the god of marriage. 

Note 3. Jerome (340-420); Ambrose (340-397): fathers of 
the Latin Church. 

Note 4. Cyril (d. 444), commemorated as a saint in the Greek, 
Latin, and Anglican churches; he was one of the instigators of 
the tumult which ended in the death of Hypatia. 

Note 5. Austin, i. e., Augustine, contended that unbap- 
tized infants were lost; Origen, an early father of the Greek 
Church. 

Note 6. Bull, Parker (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1559-1575), 
W 7 hitgift (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1583-1604), were prelates 
who suggested themselves to Lamb because of their ecclesiasti- 
cal tvranny. 

Note 7. Cf. Paradise Lost, I, 768. A. < 

Note 8. Another of Lamb's adaptations of Shakespeare. 
The original is in Twelfth Night, Act II, Sc. iv. A little later on 
will be noticed a similar free-and-easy use of a passage from 
Wordsworth. A. 

Note 9. Cf. Macbeth, I, v. _ 

Note 10. Cf. "Which having been must ever be," Words- 
worth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality, x, 15. 

Note 11. Edward Francis Burney (1760-1848), a portrait 
painter, and book illustrator on a large scale. He was a cousin 
of Mde. D'Arblay, and not a half-brother as stated in Lamb's 



202 NOTES 

" Key." His name may be seen " at the bottom of many a well- 
executed vignette in the way of his profession" in the periodi- 
cals of his day. He illustrated for Harrison, the World, Toiler, 
Guardian, Adventurer, etc., besides the Arabian Nights, and 
novels of Richardson and Smollett. A. 

Note 12. The story of Pyramus and Thisbe (Ovid's Meta- 
morphoses, IV, 55-166) can be found in any classical dictionary. 
Shakespeare's burlesque of the story may be found in Mid- 
summer Night's Dream, V, i. 

Note 13. The story of Dido may be found in Ovid's Meta- 
morphoses, XIV, 2, and in Virgil's /Eneid, I— III. 

Note 14. The story of Hero and Leander may be found in 
Ovid's Heroides, XVIII-XIX. 

Note 15. The Cayster, or Little Meander, is a river in Lydia 
much celebrated by the ancient poets (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, 
etc.), who often allude to the swans which frequented it. Cf. 
Iliad, II, 461. 

Note 16. Iris was the name of the many-colored rainbow. 
Cf. Paradise Lost, XI, 244. 

Note 17. Cf. the song of the mad Ophelia: — 

"To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, 
All in the morning betime, 
And I await at your window, 
To be your Valentine." 

Hamlet, IV, v. 

MY RELATIONS 

{London Magazine, June, 1821.) 

In these two successive essays, and in that on the Benchers 
of the Inner Temple, Lamb draws portraits, of singular inter- 
est to us, of his father, aunt, brother, and sister — all his near 
relations, with one exception. The mother's name never occurs 
in letter or published writing after the first bitterness of the 
calamity of September, 1796, had passed away. This was 
doubtless out of consideration for the feelings of his sister. 
Very noticeable is the frankness with which he describes the 
less agreeable side of the character of his brother John, who 
was still living, and apparently on quite friendly terms with 
Charles and Mary. A. 

Note 1. Sir Thomas (1605-1682), English physician, and au- 
thor of Religio Medici, Urn Burial, Christian Morals, etc. 

Note 2. A sister of John Lamb the elder, who generally lived 
with the family, and contributed something to the common 
income. After the death of the mother, a lady of comfortable 
means, a relative of the family, offered her a home, but the ar- 
rangement did not succeed, and the aunt returned to die among 
her own people. Charles writes, just before her death in Febru- 
ary, 1797 : "My poor old aunt, who was the kindest creature 
to me when I was at school, and used to bring me good things; 
when I, schoolboy-like, used to be ashamed to see her come, 



NOTES 203 

and open her apron, and bring out her basin with some nice 
thing which she had saved for me, — the good old creature is 
now dying. She says, poor thing, she is glad she is to come home 
to die with me. I was always her favourite." See also the lines 
"written on the day of my aunt's funeral" in the little volume 
of Blank Verse, by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, published 
in 1798. A. Cf. essay on Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years 
Ago, Note 6. 

Note 3. Thomas a Kempis (1380 (?)-1471), a German mystic, 
usually credited with the authorship of De Imitatione Christi. 

Note 4. The centre of Unitarianism, with which Lamb allied 
himself for a while. 

Note 5. In this and the next sentence is a curious blending 
of fact and fiction. Besides John and Mary, four other children 
had been born to John and Elizabeth Lamb in the Temple, 
between the years 1762 and 1775, but had apparently not sur- 
vived their infancy. Two daughters had been christened Eliza- 
beth, one in 1762 and another after her death, in 1768. John 
and Mary Lamb are now to be described as cousins, under the 
names of James and Bridget Elia. Charles Lamb actually had 
relations, in that degree, living in Hertfordshire, in the neigh- 
bourhood of Wheathampstead. A . 

Note 6. Two sisters of Charles Lamb's were christened by 
that name, but both died in infancy. 

Note 7. The mixture of the man of the world, dilettante, 
and sentimentalist — not an infrequent combination — is here 
described with graphic power. All that we know of John Lamb, 
the "broad, burly, jovial," living his bachelor life in chambers 
at the old Sea-House, is supported and confirmed by this pas- 
sage. Touching his extreme sensibility to the physical suffer- 
ings of animals, there is a letter of Charles to Crabb Robinson 
of the year 1810, which is worth noting. " My brother, whom 
you have met at my rooms (a plump, good-looking man of 
seven-and-f orty) , has written a book about humanity, which I 
transmit to you herewith. Wilson, the publisher, has put it into 
his head that you can get it reviewed for him. I daresay it is 
not in the scope of your review; but if you could put it into 
any likely train, he would rejoice. For, alas ! our boasted hu- 
manity partakes of vanity. As it is, he teases me to death with 
choosing to suppose that I could get it into all the Reviews, 
at a moment's notice. I!!! — who have been set up as a mark 
for them to throw at, and would willingly consign them all to 
Megsera's snaky locks. But here's the book, and don't show it 
to Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes excellent eel soup, 
and the leading points of the book are directed against that 
very process." A. 

Note 8. The pseudonym of Lawrence Sterne in A Senti- 
mental Journey. Sterne borrowed the name from Shakespeare's 
jester in Hamlet, V, i. 

Note 9. Shandian is an adjective of Lamb's own coining 
to describe Sterne's style in Tristram Shandy. 



204 NOTES 

Note 10. Domenichino (1581-1641), an Italian painter, 
whose greatest work is the "Communion of St. Jerome," in the 
Vatican. 

Note 11. Charles XII, king of Sweden from 1697 to 1718. 

Note 12. The sovereign prince of Tartary. Smollett called 
Dr. Johnson the "Great Cham of Literature." 

Note 13. Albemarle St., Piccadilly: John Murray (1778- 
1843), the second of four John Murray s, all of whom have been 
famous English publishers. John Murray, 2d, published the 
works of Byron, Moore, Campbell, Irving, etc. 

Note 14. Cf. Paradise Lost, II, 164. 

Note 15. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), a celebrated French 
landscape painter. 

Note 16. Hobbima (1638-1709), a famous Dutch landscape 
painter. 

Note 17. James Christie, father and son, were famous an- 
tiquarians and auctioneers in Pall Mall. The younger Christie 
was also an art critic and author of reputation. 

Note 18. Pall Mall is the street which leads from Trafalgar 
Square to the Green Park. Pronounced Pell Mell. 

Note 19. Cf. Pope's Epistle to Martha Blount, 20. 

Note 20. Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520), the celebrated 
Italian painter, among whose masterpieces are " The Marriage 
of the Virgin" (Milan), "St. George" (Louvre), the Stanze of 
the Vatican, "The Transfiguration" (Vatican). 

Note 21. Agostino, Annibale, Lodovico Carracci, Italian 
painters of the Bolognese school. 

Note 22. Luca Giordano (1632-1705), a Neapolitan artist, 
called "Fa-Presto" for the speed of his execution. 

Note 23. Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), an Italian painter of no 
great merit; his paintings are largely Madonnas and religious 
subjects. 

Note 24. Cf. Shakespeare's Richard II, V, i, 78-80. 

Note 25. Cf. The Faerie Queene, I, in, i. 

Note 26. Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), a famous English 
abolitionist; the quotation, "true yoke-fellow with Time" is 
from Wordsworth's sonnet to Clarkson. 

Note 27. Distrest Sailors. (Lamb's " Key "). 

Note 28. From an early sonnet of Lamb's. A. 

In the London Magazine the essay ended with the words, 
"Till then, farewell." Lucas. 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

(London Magazine, September, 1821.) 

Lucas's edition of Essays of Elia prints (p. 362) a woodcut 
of Lamb's birthplace, No. 2, Crown Office Row, and (p. 364) 
a map of the Temple. 

Note 1. Charles Lamb was born on the 10th of February, 
1775, in Crown Office Row, Temple, where Samuel Salt, a 



NOTES 205 

Bencher of the Inn, owned two sets of chambers. This was 
Lamb's home for the seven years preceding his admission into 
Christ's Hospital in 1782, and afterwards, in the holiday seasons, 
till he left school in 1789, and later, at least till Salt's death 
in 1792. A recent editor of Lamb's works has stated that, with 
the exception of Salt, almost all the names of Benchers given 
in this essay are "purely imaginary." The reverse of this is 
the fact. All the names here celebrated are to be found in the 
records of the honorable society. A. 

Note 2. Spenser's Proihalamion, stanza viii. A. 

Note 3. Paper Buildings, facing King's Bench Walk in the 
Temple. The line is doubtless improvised for the occasion. A. 

Note 4. Twickenham (once the residence of Pope, it will be 
remembered) was some twelve miles nearer to the source of the 
Thames than was London. 

$ote 5. The hall of the Middle Temple. The fountain still 
plays, but "quantum mutatus." A. 

Note 6. Shakespeare's Sonnet, No. 104. A. 

Note 7. 3 Henry VI, II, v, 24. A. 

Note 8. Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). At one time Milton's 
assistant in the Latin Secretaryship, and known principally 
in his own day for his satires against the Stuarts. This passage 
is quoted from verses entitled "The Garden," which may be 
found in Palgrave's Golden Treasury. 

Note 9. Lincoln's Inn is one of the London Inns of Court, 
so named from the Earl of Lincoln, whose town house originally 
covered the same site. 

Note 10. Concerning the winged horse, the badge of the 
Inner Temple, Mrs. E. T. Cook, in her Highways and Byways 
of London, 1902, has this interesting passage: "This winged 
horse has a curious history; for, when the horse was originally 
chosen as an emblem, he had no wings, but was ridden by 
two men at once, to indicate the self-chosen poverty of the 
brotherhood; in lapse of years the figures of the men became 
worn and abraded, and when restored were mistaken for 
wings." Lucas. 

Note 11. Jekyll, the Master in Chancery. The wit, and 
friend of wits, among the old Benchers — the Sir George Rose 
of his day. A . 

Note 12. Nephew of William, fifth Earl of Coventry; of 
North Cray Place, Bexley, Kent; called to the Bench in 1766; 
died in 1797. A. 

Note 13. Cf. 2 Kings ii. 

Note 14. Called to the Bench, 1782 ; died in 1792. The 
Bencher in whom Lamb had the most peculiar interest. John 
Lamb, the father, was in the service of Salt for some five and 
forty years — he acting as clerk and confidential servant, and 
his wife as housekeeper. As we have seen, Mr. Salt occupied 
two sets of chambers in Crown Office Row, forming a substantial 
house. He had two indoor servants, besides John and Eliza- 
beth Lamb, and kept his carriage. Salt died in 1792. By his 



206 NOTES 

will, dated 1786, he gives "To my servant, John Lamb, who 
has lived with me near forty years, £500 South Sea stock; and 
to Mrs. Lamb £100 in money, well deserved for her care 
and attention during my illness." By a codicil, dated Decem- 
ber 20, 1787, his executors are directed to employ John Lamb 
to receive the testator's "Exchequer annuities of £210 and £14 
during their term, and to pay him £10 a-year for his trouble 
so long as he shall receive them," a delicate and ingenious way 
of retaining John Lamb in his service, as it were, after his own 
decease. By a later codicil, he gives another hundred pounds 
to Mrs. Lamb. These benefactions, and not the small pension 
erroneously stated, on the authority of Talfourd, in my memoir 
of Lamb, formed the provision made by Salt for his faithful 
pair of attendants. The appointment of Charles to the clerk- 
ship in the India House in 1792 must have been the last of the 
many kind acts of Samuel Salt to the family. Where the Lamb 
family moved to after Salt's death in 1792, and how they strug- 
gled on between that date and the fatal year 1796, is one of 
the unsettled points of Lamb's history. Mary Lamb's skill 
with her needle was probably used as a means of increasing 
the common income. Crabb Robinson tells us of an article on 
needlework contributed by her some years later to one of the 
magazines. A. 

Note 15. See Note 22. Lamb mentions, in Newspapers Five 
and Thirty Years Ago, a Lovell whose name may have been the 
origin of this pseudonym for Lamb's father. 

Note 16. The heroine of a cause celebre in the year 1752. 
Her whole story will be found, a propos of the town of Henley, 
in Mr. Leslie's charming book on the Thames, entitled Our 
River. Miss Blandy, the daughter of an attorney at Henley, 
with good expectations from her father, attracted the atten- 
tion of an adventurer, a certain Captain Cranstoun. The father 
disapproved of the intimacy, and the Captain entrusted Miss 
Blandy with a certain powder which she administered to her 
father with a fatal result. Her defence was that she believed 
the powder to be of the nature of a love-philtre, which would 
have the effect of making her father well-affected towards 
her lover. The defence was not successful, and Miss Blandy 
was found guilty of murder, and executed at Oxford in April, 
1752. A. 

Note 17. Susannah Pierson, sister of Salt's brother-Bencher, 
Peter Pierson, mentioned in this essay, and one of Salt's ex- 
ecutors. By his second codicil, Salt bequeaths her, as a mark of 
regard, £500; his silver inkstand; and the "works of Pope, 
Swift, Shakespeare, Addison, and Steele;" also Sherlock's 
Sermons (Sherlock had been Master of the Temple), and any 
other books she likes to choose out of his library, hoping that, 
"by reading and reflection," they will "make her life more 
comfortable." How oddly touching this bequest seems to us, 
in the light thrown on it by Lamb's account of the relation 
between Salt and his friend's sister! What a pleasant glimpse, 



NOTES 207 

again, is here afforded of the "spacious closet of good old Eng- 
lish reading" into which Charles and Mary were "tumbled/' 
as he told us, at an early age, when they " browsed at will upon 
that fair and wholesome pasturage." A. 

Note 18. One of four parishes in Kent, known as The Crays. 

Note 19. Hie currus et arma fuere: here were his chariots 
and his arms. Virgil's Mneid, I, 17. 

Note 20. John Elwes (1714-1789) was a famous English 
miser. Although he spent his money freely in gaming, he made 
himself a notorious spectacle by his refusal to provide for his 
personal necessities. He was not, however, illiberal in contribut- 
ing to the needs of others. 

Note 21. Cf. Swift's Voyage to Laputa, where this servant 
is described as one whose business it was to strike gently " with 
his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right 
ear of him, or them, to whom the speaker addresseth himself." 

Note 22. Lamb's father, John Lamb. The sketch of him 
given in Mr. Proctor's memoirs of Charles, taken doubtless 
from the portrait here mentioned, confirms the statement of 
a general resemblance to Garrick. A. A portrait of John Lamb 
is reproduced in Lucas's edition of Essays of Elia, p. 369. 

Note 23. Cf. King Lear, V, iii. 
_ Note 24. David Garrick (1717-1779), the celebrated Eng- 
lish actor who, in his Drury Lane Theatre, did much to make 
known to his contemporaries the plays of Shakespeare: pupil 
and friend of Dr. Johnson, and member of the famous London 
Club. 

Note 25. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), author of A Tale 
of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, Journal to Stella, Gulliver's 
Travels. 

Note 26. Matthew Prior (1664-1721), joined with Swift 
and Pope in the project of the Scriblerus Club. The most 
famous of his satires was The City House and the Country House, 
a parody of Dryden's The Hind and the Panther. 

Note 27. Canon Ainger, in his Life of Charles Lamb, speaks 
of a medallion of Salt done by John Lamb in plaster of Paris. 

Note 28. Izaak Walton (1593-1683), author of The Com- 
pleat Angler. 

Note 29. One of Lamb's quotations from himself. It occurs 
in the lines (February, 1797) "written on the day of my aunt's 
funeral: " — 

"One parent yet is left, — a wretched thing, 
A sad survivor of his buried wife, 
A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, 
A semblance most forlorn of what he was, 
A merry cheerful man." 

John Lamb lingered till April, 1799. A. 

Note 30. Bayes was the name of a character in Bucking- 
ham's farce, "The Rehearsal," — a coxcomb's part which 
Garrick especially delighted in. 



208 NOTES 

Note 31. Called to the Bench 1800, died 1808. It will be 
seen that Salt and Pierson, though friends and contemporaries 
at the Bar, were not so as Benchers. Salt had been some years 
dead when his friend was called to the Bench. A. Lamb may 
be comparing his personal appearance to that of "our great 
philanthropist," John Howard. 

Note 32. The antiquary, naturalist, and correspondent of 
White of Selbourne. Called to the Bench in 1777, died 1800. A. 

Note 33. Called to the Bench 1775, died 1791. A. 

Note 34. Called to the Bench 1792, died 1804. A. 

Note 35. There never was a Bencher of the Inner Temple 
of this name. The gentleman here intended, Mr. Richard Two- 
penny, was a stockbroker, a member of the Kentish family of 
that name, who, being a bachelor, lived in chambers in the 
Temple. On his retirement from business he resided at West 
Mailing in Kent, and died in 1809, at the age of eighty-two. 
Mr. Edward Twopenny of Woodstock, Sittingbourne, a great- 
nephew of this gentleman, remembers him well, and informs 
me that he was, as Lamb describes him, remarkably thin. 
Lamb evidently recalled him as a familiar figure in the Temple 
in his own childish days, and supposed him to have been a 
member of the Bar. Mr. Twopenny held the important position 
of stockbroker to the Bank of England. A. 

Note 36. Called to the Bench 1801, died in 1812. A. 

Note 37. Called to the Bench 1770, died 1787. This gentle- 
man was M. P. for New Romney and a member of Lord Shel- 
burne's Government in 1782. From his wide reading and 
extraordinary memory he was known, beyond the circle of his 
brother-Benchers, as " the omniscient." Dr. Johnson (revers- 
ing the usual order of his translations) styles him the " all- 
knowing." See Boswell, under date of April, 1776: "No, Sir; 
Mr. Thrale is to go by my advice to Mr. Jackson (the all-know- 
ing), and get from him a plan for seeing the most that can be 
seen in the time that we have to travel." A. 

Note 38. Roger Bacon (1214-1294), author of the scientific 
work Opus Magnus. Greene has represented him in his play 
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay as a great wizard possessing all 
magic powers. 

Note 39. Called to the Bench 1785, died 1812. Mr. Mingay 
was an eminent King's Counsel, and in his day a powerful rival 
at the Bar, of Thomas Erskine; according to an obituary 
notice in the Gentleman's Magazine, of "a persuasive oratory, 
infinite wit, and most excellent fancy." His retort upon Erskine, 
about the knee-buckles, goes to confirm this verdict. A. 

Note 40. Michael Angelo's " Mos°s " is the colossal statue in 
San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. The peculiar arrangement of 
the hair gives the effect of horns to the august head. 

Note 41. Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, a post which he 
filled for fifty years. He persevered to the end of his days in 
wearing the costume of the reign in which he was born. A. 

Note 42. Cf. 1 Samuel xxviii, 13, 14. 



NOTES 209 

Note 43. Lamb's use of the word Goshen was frequent; 
here it - is peculiarly adapted to his meaning; Goshen was the 
small pastoral region in Lower Egypt occupied by the Israelites 
before the Exodus. 

Note 44. Randal Norris, for many years Sub-Treasurer and 
Librarian of the Inner Temple. At the age of fourteen he was 
articled to Mr. Walls of Paper Buildings, and from that time, 
for more than half a century, resided in the Inner Temple. His 
wife was a native of Widford, the village adjoining Blakesware, 
in Hertfordshire, and a friend of Mrs. Field, the housekeeper, 
and there was thus a double tie connecting Randal Norris 
with Lamb's family. His name appears early in Charles's 
correspondence. At the season of his mother's death he tells 
Coleridge that Mr. Norris had been more than a father to him, 
and Mrs. Norris more than a mother. Mr. Norris died in the 
Temple in January, 1827, at the age of seventy-six, and was 
buried in the Temple churchyard. Talfourd misdates the event 
by a year. It was then that Charles Lamb wrote to Crabb 
Robinson, " In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. 
He was my friend and my father's friend all the life I can 
remember. I seem to have made foolish friendships ever since. 
Those are the friendships which outlive a second generation. 
Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first 
knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to 
call me Charley now." A. 

Note 45. Sylvanus Urban was the pseudonym of the editor 
of the Gentleman's Magazine. 

Note 46. Cf. King Lear, II, iv. 

Note 47. Richard Hooker (1553-1600), the celebrated 
divine, was appointed Master of the Temple in 1575. 

Note 48. John Selden (1584-1654), a famous English ju- 
rist, antiquary, politician, and author, who lived in the Inner 
Temple. 

GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

Note 1. The Faerie Queene, Spenser's (1552-1599) great 
allegory. 

Note 2. A glance at the Abbey of Theleme founded by 
Gargantua for persons of sweet reasonableness (see Rabelais, 
Book I, Chaps, lii-lvii). Lucas. 

Note 3. Utopian is derived from Utopia (Nowhere) by Sir 
Thomas More, a description of an imaginary commonwealth. 
Rabelaisian is derived from Rabelais (1495-1553), the famous 
French humorist. The satire in his works is what Lamb has 
in mind here. His Utopian Rabelaisian Christians would be 
satirical about present customs and manners and champions of 
a new order of things. 

Note 4. An unusual guest. 

Note 5. Cf. Milton's Comus, 11. 175, 176. 

Note 6. Cf. Deuteronomy xxxii, 15. 



210 NOTES 

Note 7. Cf. Virgil's JEneid, Book III. 

" Swiftly they cleave 
The air, and leave their filthy tracks behind 
On the half-eaten banquet. All but one, — 
Celaeno. She, the gloomy prophetess, 
On a high rock alighting, thus broke forth 
In words. 

Ye hold your course to Italy ; 
Your Italy ye shall find, with winds invoked, 
And sail into her ports. But ere ye gird 
Your city with its walls, by famine dire, 
For this your outrage ye shall be compelled 
To gnaw the very boards on which you eat." 

Cranch's Translation, 11. 312-330. 

Note 8. Paradise Regained, II, 340-347. 

Note 9. A holiday, or feast day. 

Note 10. Roman Emperor from 218-222; but he gave over 
the government into the hands of his mother, while he abandoned 
himself to debauchery and gluttony. 

Note 11. Paradise Regained, II, 264-278. 

Note 12. Coleridge. 

Note 13. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). For a description 
of his voracious appetite, cf. Macaulay's Essay on Johnson. 

Note 14. Dagon was a deity worshipped by the Philistines, 
— half man and half fish. Cf. Judges xvi, 23, and 1 Samuel v. 

Note 15. Chartreuse, in France, the site of the leading Car- 
thusian monastery. 

Note 16. An old proverb runs: "I think thou wast born 
at Hoggs-Norton, where piggs play upon the organs." Hog's 
Norton is on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. 
One account of the origin of the legend is the organ-playing 
of a villager named Pigg. In Witt's Recreation, there is this 
epigram on pigs' devouring a bed of pennyroyal, commonly 
called organs : — 

" A good wife once, a bed of organs set, 
The pigs came in, and eat up every whit ; 
The goodman said, Wife, you your garden may 
Hog's Norton call, here pigs on organs play." 

Lucas. 

Note 17. Lucian (c 120-200), a celebrated Greek satirist, 
from whose wit even religion did not escape. " Lucian has much 
in common with Swift, and more-, perhaps, with Voltaire." 
Jebb, Greek Literature. 

Note 18. Charles Valentine Le Grice, Lamb's schoolfellow at 
Christ's Hospital. See the essay on Christ's Hospital Five and 
Thirty Years Ago. 

Note 19. "There was no place (occasion) for those things 
then." Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 19. 

Note 20. Leigh Hunt tells the story in his account of Christ's 
Hospital: "Our dress was of the coarsest and quaintest kind, 



NOTES 211 

but was respected out of doors, and is so. It consisted of a 
blue drugget gown, or body, with ample skirts to it; a yel- 
low vest underneath in winter time; small clothes of Russia 
duck; worsted yellow stockings; a leathern girdle; and a little 
black worsted cap, usually carried in the hand. I believe it 
was the ordinary dress of children in humble life during the 
reign of the Tudors. We used to flatter ourselves that it was 
taken from the monks; and there went a monstrous tradition, 
that at one period it consisted of blue velvet with silver buttons. 
It was said, also, that during the blissful era of the blue velvet 
we had roast mutton for supper; but that the small clothes 
not being then in existence, and the mutton suppers too luxu- 
rious, the eatables were given up for the ineffables." A. 
Note 21 . I shudder as I recall it. Virgil's AUneid, II, 204. 
.Note 22. The following beautiful passage from the Recrea- 
tions and Studies by a Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth 
Century (John Murray, 1882) shows that others, besides Lamb, 
had thought the main thought of this essay. The writer is 
describing, in 1781, the drive from Huddersfield, along the 
banks of the Calder: "I never felt anything so fine: I shall 
remember it and thank God for it as long as I live. I am sorry 
I did not think to say grace after it. Are we to be grateful 
for nothing but beef and pudding? to thank God for life, and 
not for happiness?" A. 

DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

(London Magazine, January, 1822.) 

The mood in which Lamb was prompted to this singularly 
affecting confidence was clearly due to a family bereavement, 
a month or two before the date of the essay. I may be allowed 
to repeat words of my own, used elsewhere, on this subject. 
" Lamb's elder brother John was then lately dead. A letter to 
Wordsworth, of March, 1822, mentions his death as even then 
recent, and speaks of a certain 'deadness to everything' which 
the writer dates from that event. The 'broad, burly, jovial' 
John Lamb (so Talfourd describes him) had lived his own easy 
prosperous life up to this time, not altogether avoiding social 
relations with his brother and sister, but evidently absorbed to 
the last in his own interests and pleasures. The death of this 
brother, wholly unsympathetic as he was with Charles, served 
to bring home to him his loneliness. He was left in the world 
with but one near relation, and that one too often removed 
from him for months at a time by the saddest of afflictions. No 
wonder if he became keenly aware of his solitude." The emotion 
discernible in this essay is absolutely genuine; the blending of 
fact with fiction in the details is curiously arbitrary. A. 

Note 1. Cf. the essay on Blakesmoor in H shire for a 

description of the great house, correctly stated there to be, not 
in Norfolk, but in Hertfordshire. 



212 NOTES 

Note 2. The original story of the Children in the Wood can 
be found in Percy's Reliques, III, ii. 

Note 3. Lamb's grandmother, Mary Field, for more than 
fifty years housekeeper at Blakesware, a dower-house of the 
Hertfordshire family of Plumers, a few miles from Ware. Wil- 
liam Plumer, who represented his country for so many years in 
Parliament, was still living, and Lamb may have disguised the 
whereabouts of the "great house" out of consideration for him. 
Why he substituted Norfolk is only matter for conjecture. Per- 
haps there were actually scenes from the old legend of the Chil- 
dren in the Wood carved upon a chimney-piece at Blakesware; 
possibly there was some old story in the annals of the Plumer 
family touching the mysterious disappearance of two children, 
for which it pleased Lamb to substitute the story of the familiar 
ballad. His grandmother, as he has told us in his lines The 
Grandame, was deeply versed "in anecdote domestic." A. 

Note 4. The dismantling of the Blakesware House had there- 
fore begun, it appears, before the death of William Plumer. 
Cussans, in his History of Hertfordshire, says it was pulled down in 
1822. Perhaps the complete demolition was not carried out till 
after Mr. Plumer's death in that year. The "other house" was 
Gilston, the principal seat of the Plumers, some miles distant. A. 

Note 5. Mrs. Field died in the summer of 1792, and was 
buried in the adjoining churchyard of Widford. Her gravestone, 
with the name and date of death, August 5, 1792, is still to be 
seen, and is one of the few tangible memorials of Lamb's family 
history still existing. By a curious fatality, it narrowly escaped 
destruction in the great gale of October, 1881, when a tree was 
blown down across it, considerably reducing its proportions. A. 

Note 6. "I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's 
prints, and the Roman Caesars in marble hung around." Lamb's 
letter to Southey (Letters, XLV). Cf. also the essay on Blakes- 
moor in H shire. 

Note 7. John L. — Of course John Lamb, the brother. 
Whether Charles was ever a "lame-footed" boy, through some 
temporary cause, we cannot say. We know that at the time of 
the mother's death John Lamb was suffering from an injury 
to his foot, and made it (after his custom) an excuse for not 
exerting himself unduly. See the letter of Charles to Coleridge 
written at the time. "My brother, little disposed (I speak not 
without tenderness for' him) at any time to take care of old age 
and infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from 
such duties." A. 

Note 8. / courted the fair Alice W n. — In my memoir of 

Charles Lamb, I have given the reasons for identifying Alice 

W n with the Anna of the early sonnets, and again with the 

form and features of the village maiden described as Rosamund 
Gray. The girl who is celebrated under these various names 
won the heart of Charles Lamb while he was yet little more 
than a boy. He does not care to conceal from us that it was in 
Hertfordshire, while under his grandmother's roof, that he first 



NOTES 213 

met her. The Beauty " with the yellow Hertfordshire hair — 
so like my Alice," is how he describes the portrait in the picture 
gallery at Blakesmoor. Moreover, the "winding woodwalks 
green" where he roamed with his Anna, can hardly be uncon- 
nected with the "walks and windings of Blakesmoor," apos- 
trophised at the close of that beautiful essay. And there is a 
group of cottages called Blenheim, not more than half a mile 
from the site of Blakesware House, where the original Anna, ac- 
cording to the traditions of the village, resided. " Alice W n" 

is one of Lamb's deliberate inventions. In the key to the initials 

employed by him in his essays, he explains that Alice W n 

stood for Alice Winterton, but that the name was "feigned." 
Anna was, in fact, the nearest clue to the real name that Lamb 
has vouchsafed. Her actual name was, I have the best reason 
to believe, Ann Simmons. She afterwards married Mr. Bartram, 
the pawnbroker of Princes Street, Leicester Square. The com- 
plete history of this episode in Lamb's life will probably never 
come to light. There are many obvious reasons why any idea 
of marriage should have been indefinitely abandoned. The pov- 
erty in Lamb's home is one such reason; and one, even more 
decisive, may have been the discovery of the taint of madness 
that was inherited, in more or less degree, by all the children. 
Why Lamb chose the particular alias of Winterton, under which 
to disguise his early love, will never be known. It was a name not 
unfamiliar to him, being that of the old steward in Colman's play 
of the Iron Chest, a part created by Lamb's favourite comedian 
Dodd. The play was first acted in 1796, about the time when 
the final separation of the lovers seems to have taken place. 

In illustration of Lamb's fondness for children, I have the 
pleasure of adding the following pretty letter to a child, not 
hitherto printed. It was written to a little girl (one of twin- 
sisters), the daughter of Kenney the dramatist, after Lamb and 
his sister's visit to the Kenney s at Versailles in September, 1822. 
The letter has been most kindly placed at my disposal by my 
friend Mr. W. J. Jeaffreson, whose mother was the Sophy of the 
letter. At the close of a short note to Mrs. Kenney, Lamb adds: 
" Pray deliver what follows to my dear wife, Sophy: — 

"My dear Sophy, — The few short days of connubial felicity 
which I passed with you among the pears and apricots of Ver- 
sailles were some of the happiest of my life. But they are flown! 

" And your other half, your dear co-twin — that she-you — 
that almost equal sharer of my affections — you and she are 
my better half, a quarter apiece. She and you are my pretty 
sixpence, you the head, and she the tail. Sure, Heaven that 
made you so alike must pardon the error of an inconsiderate 
moment, should I for love of you, love her too well. Do you 
think laws were made for lovers? I think not. 

"Adieu, amiable pair. 

" Yours, and yours, 

"C. Lamb. 

" P. S. — I inclose half a dear kiss apiece for you." A. 



214 NOTES 

Note 9. The river of oblivion whose waters brought to those 
who drank them forgetfulness of his previous existence. Lamb 
probably has in mind a passage in Virgil's JEneid, VI, 748-751. 

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 

(London Magazine, March, 1822.) 

Note 1. B. F. — Barron Field. Born October 23, 1786. He 
was educated for the Bar and practised for some years, going 
the Oxford Circuit. In 1816 he married, and went out to New 
South Wales as Judge of the Supreme Court at Sydney. In 
1824 he returned to England, having resigned his judgeship; 
but two or three years afterwards he was appointed Chief- 
Justice of Gibraltar. He died at Torquay in 1846. His brother, 
Francis John Field, was a fellow clerk of Charles Lamb's at 
the India House, which was perhaps the origin of the acquaint- 
ance. Barron Field edited a volume of papers (Geographical 
Memoirs) on New South Wales for Murray, and the appendix 
contains some short poems, entitled First-Fruits of Australian 
Poetry. Some papers of his are to be found in Leigh Hunt's 
Reflector, to which Lamb also contributed. A. 

Note 2. One of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions. — Mrs. Eliza- 
beth Rowe (1674-1737), an exemplary person, and now for- 
gotten moralist in verse and prose. Among other works she 
wrote, Friendship in Death — in Twenty Letters from the Dead 
to the Living. The following are from the "superscriptions " of 
these letters: "To Sylvia from Alexis;" " From Cleander to his 
Brother, endeavouring to reclaim him from his extravagances;" 
"To Emilia from Delia, giving her a description of the invisible 
regions, and the happy state of the inhabitants of Paradise." A. 

Note 3. 

" Let a Post- Angel start with thee, 
And then the goal of earth shall reach as soon as he." 

Cowley, Hymn to Night. 

Note 4. Here we see some of the curious lore in Lamb's 
mind. He probably had his knowledge of Plato's man from 
Milton's Latin poem, " Ono the Platonic idea as it was under- 
stood by Aristotle," which may be read in Cowper's translation. 
The italicized words following explains Lamb's allusion to the 
man in the moon : — 

"Whether, companion of the stars, he spend 
Eternal ages, roaming at his will 
From sphere to sphere the tenfold heav'ns ; or dwell 
On the moon's side that nearest neighbours earth." 

Lucas, 

who acknowledges the assistance here of Messrs. Hallward and 
Hill. 

Note 5. See Lamb's essay On the Acting of Munden. 

Note 6. The late Lord C. — The second Lord Camelford, 
killed in a duel with Mr. Best in 1804. The day before his death 



NOTES 215 

he gave directions that his body should be removed "as soon 
as may be convenient to a country far distant! to a spot not 
near the haunts of men, but where the surrounding scenery 
may smile upon my remains. It is situated on the borders of 
the lake of St. Lampierre, in the Canton of Berne, and three 
trees stand in the particular spot." The centre tree he desired 
might be taken up and his body being there deposited imme- 
diately replaced. At the foot of this tree, his lordship added, 
he had formerly passed many solitary hours, contemplating the 
mutability of human affairs. — Annual Register for 1804. A. 

Note 7. The patron saint of those in danger at sea. 

Note 8. Lamb refers directly to Juvenal, Satires, XIV, 34: — 

" Juvenes, quibus arte benigna 
Et meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan." 

(Youths whose breast the Titan moulded with genial art and 
of a finer clay.) 

Juvenal probably refers to the belief expressed by Shake- 
speare in lines in Antony and Cleopatra which Lamb seems to 
have had in mind. First, 

" The fire 
That quickens Nilus' slime." I, iii. 

and then, "Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud 
by the operation of your sun." II, vii. Lucas. 

Note 9. As described in The Adventures of Peter Wilkins by 
Robert Paltock, 1751. 

Note 10. The Greek Cynic philosopher (c. 412-323 b. c.) 
whose eccentricities — living in a tub, searching with his lan- 
tern for an honest man, ordering Alexander to step out of his 
sunlight — are preserved in tradition. 

Note 11. Enable the descendant of an illegitimate child, in 
the third generation, to resume the family coat of arms. 

Note 12. To the seat of the oracle of Pythian Apollo at 
Delphos, at the foot of Mt. Parnassus. 

Note 13. So called from Nicholas Hare, Master of the Rolls 
in the reign of Mary I. Lamb from his home at 4 Inner Temple 
Lane, near by, wrote, " The rooms are delicious, and Hare's Court 
trees come in at the window so that it 's like living in a garden." 

Note 14. Lycidas, quoted incorrectly, as usual. A. 

Note 15. Miss Winter. 

Note 16. James White, Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hos- 
pital. Died in 1820. A. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

(London Magazine, May, 1822.) 

Note 1. The jaws of Hell. Virgil's Mneid, VI, 201. 

Note 2. Cf. Macbeth, IV, i. 

Note 3. Saloop was an aromatic drink prepared from sassa- 



216 NOTES 

fras bark and other ingredients, very popular in London in 
Lamb's day. Mr. Read's shop was at No. 102, Fleet Street. 

Note 4. Cf. Note 17, The South-Sea House. Lucas's edition 
of Essays of Elia reproduces a detail of this picture of Hogarth's 
on p. 382. 

Note 5. Milton's Comus, 1. 223. 

Note 6. Cf. "Rachel weeping for her children refused to 
be comforted for her children, because they were not." Jere- 
miah xxxi, 15. 

Note 7. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713-1776), the travel- 
ler, ran away from Westminster School more than once, becom- 
ing, among other things, a chimney-sweeper. 

Note 8. The seat of the Dukes of Norfolk in Sussex. 

Note 9. Cf. Virgil's JEneid, I, 643-722. 

Note 10. Cradle clothes. 

Note 11. My pleasant friend Jem White. — James White, a 
schoolfellow of Lamb's at Christ's Hospital, and the author of 
a Shakespearian squib, suggested by the Ireland Forgeries — 
"Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his friends, 
now first made public by a gentleman, a descendant of Dame 
Quickly, from genuine manuscripts which have been in the 
possession of the Quickly family near four hundred years." 
It was published in 1795, and Southey believed that Lamb 
had in some way a hand in it. The Preface in particular bears 
some traces of his peculiar vein, but Lamb's enthusiastic 
recommendation of the book to his friends seems to show that 
it was in the main the production of James White. The jeu 
d' esprit is not more successful than such parodies usually are. 
White took to journalism, in some form, and was at the time 
of his death in March, 1820, an "agent of Provincial news- 
papers." His annual supper to the little climbing-boys was 
imitated by many charitable persons in London and other large 
towns. A. 

Note 12. This was held in London from 1133 until 1855. 

Note 13. Lamb's old friend and editor, John Fenwick, of 
the Albion. See Essay on the Two Races of Men. A. 

Note 14. The second Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, the 
companion of the excesses of Charles II. 

Note 15. Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, I, 541, 542. 

Note 16. Cf. Cymbeline, IV, ii. 

Note 17. It is curious that in this essay Lamb does not 
even allude to the grave subject of the cruelties incident to 
the climbing-boys' occupation — a question which for some 
years past had attracted the attention of philanthropic persons, 
in and out of Parliament. A year or two later, however, he 
made a characteristic offering to the cause. In 1824 James 
Montgomery of Sheffield edited a volume of prose and verse 
— The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend, and the Climbing-Boy's 
Album, to which many writers of the day contributed. Lamb, 
who had been applied to, sent Blake's poem, — The Chimney- 
sweeper. It was headed, " Communicated by Mr. Charles Lamb, 



NOTES 217 

from a very rare and curious little work" — doubtless a true 
description of the Songs of Innocence in 1824. It is noteworthy 
that, before sending it, this incorrigible joker could not refrain 
from quietly altering Blake's "Little Tom Dacre" into "Little 
Tom Toddy." A. 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

{London Magazine, September, 1822.) 

The tradition as to the origin of cooking, which is of course 
the salient feature of this essay, had been communicated to 
Lamb, he here tells us, by his friend M., — Thomas Manning, — 
whose acquaintance he had made long ago at Cambridge, and 
whi> since those days had spent much of his life in exploring 
China and Thibet. Lamb says the same thing in one of his 
private letters, so we may accept it as a literal fact. The ques- 
tion therefore arises whether Manning had found the legend 
existing in any form in China, or whether Lamb's detail of 
the Chinese manuscript is wholly fantastic. It is at least cer- 
tain that the story is a very old one, and appears as early 
as the third century, in the writings of Porphyry of Tyre. The 
following passage, a literal translation from" the Treatise De 
Abstinentid of that philosopher, sets forth one form of the 
legend : — 

" Asclepiades, in his work on Cyprus and Phcenice, writes 
as follows : ' Originally it was not usual for anything having life 
to be sacrificed to the gods — not that there was any law on 
the subject, for it was supposed to be forbidden by the law of 
nature. At a certain period, however (tradition says), when 
blood was required in atonement for blood, the first victim 
was sacrificed, and was entirely consumed by fire. On one oc- 
casion, in later times, when a sacrifice of this kind was being 
offered, and the victim in process of being burned, a morsel 
of its flesh fell to the ground. The priest, who was standing 
by, immediately picked it up, and on removing his fingers 
from the burnt flesh, chanced to put them to his mouth, in 
order to assuage the pain of the burn. As soon as he had tasted 
the burnt flesh he conceived a strange longing to eat of it, 
and accordingly began to eat the flesh himself, and gave some 
to his wife also. Pygmalion, on hearing of it, directed that the 
man and his wife should be put to death, by being hurled head- 
long from a rock, and appointed another man to the priest's 
office. When, moreover, not long after this man was offering 
the same sacrifice, and in the same wav ate of the flesh, he was 
sentenced to the same punishment. When, however, the thing 
made further progress, and men continued to offer sacrifice, 
and in order to gratify their appetite could not refrain from the 
flesh, but regularly adopted the habit of eating it, all punish- 
ment for so doing ceased to be inflicted.' " 

Manning may have been aware of this passage, and have told 



218 NOTES 

the story in his own language to Charles Lamb. It is worth 
noticing that in 1823, the year following the appearance of this 
essay, Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, published a translation 
of certain Treatises of Porphyry, including the De Abstinentid. 
It is possible that Manning may, on some occasion, have learned 
the tradition from Taylor. 

Recent editors of Lamb have asserted, without offering any 
sufficient evidence, that he owed the idea of this rhapsody on 
the Pig to an Italian poem, by Tigrinio Bistonio, published in 
1761, at Modena, entitled Gli Elogi del Proco (Tigrinio Bistonio 
was the pseudonym of the Abate Giuseppe Ferrari). Mr. Rich- 
ard Garnett of the British Museum, to whom I am indebted for 
calling my attention to the passage in Porphyry, has kindly 
examined for me the Italian poem in question, and assures me 
that he can find in it no resemblance whatever to Lamb's treat- 
ment of the same theme. There is no affectation in Lamb's 
avowal of his fondness for this delicacy. Towards the close of 
his life, however, Roast Pig declined somewhat in his favour, and 
was superseded by hare, and other varieties of game. Indeed, 
Lamb was as fond of game as Cowper was of fish; and as in 
Cowper's case, his later letters constantly open with acknow- 
ledgments of some recent offering of the kind from a good- 
natured correspondent. A. 

Note 1. Thomas Manning, a life-long friend of Lamb's, 
with whom he kept up a correspondence, which contains some 
of tiie best of Lamb's wit and humour. 

Note 2. Confucius (c. 550-478 b. c), the Chinese philoso- 
pher. 

Note 3. Locke, John (1632-1704), the English philosopher, 
author of the Essay concerning Human Understanding. 

Note 4. World of eatables. 

Note 5. The prince of viands. 

Note 6. The love of uncleanness. 

Note 7. From Coleridge's Epitaph on an Infant. It must 
have been with unusual glee that Lamb here borrowed half 
of his friend's quatrain. The epitaph had appeared in the very 
earliest volume to which he was himself a contributor — the 
little volume of Coleridge's poems, published in 1796, by Joseph 
Cottle, of Bristol. The lines are there allotted a whole page to 
themselves. A . 

Note 8. A phrase from Milton's Samson Agonistes, 1. 1695. 
Lucas. 

Note 9. " I gave you all." King Lear, II, iv. 

Note 10. The reader will not fail to note the audacious in- 
difference to fact that makes Lamb assert in a parenthesis that 
his school was on the other side of London Bridge, and that he 
was afterwards "at St. Omer's." A. 

Note 11. St. Omer, France, formerly held a Roman Catholic 
college for English students. Lamb is simply assuming that he 
attended it. 

Note 12. By a tremendous thrashing. 



NOTES 219 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA 

The Second Series of Elia was published in a collected form 
by Mr. Moxon in 1833. It was furnished with a Preface, pur- 
porting to be written by " a friend of the late Elia," announcing 
nis death, and commenting freely on his character and habits. 
This Preface (written, of course, by Lamb himself) is placed 
in the present edition at the beginning of the volume. Elia is 
here supposed to have died in the interval between the publi- 
cation of the First and Second Series. From the opening sen- 
tences we should conclude that it was at first intended as a post- 
script to the First Series, and indeed it originally appeared in the 
London Magazine for January, 1823. But this design, if ever 
entertained, was not carried out. A. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 

{London Magazine, September, 1824.) 

Note 1. Blakesmoor, as has been' already observed, was 
Blakesware, a dower-house of the Plumers, about five miles 
from Ware, in Hertfordshire. If there were ever any doubt on 
the subject, Lamb's own words are decisive. In a letter to Ber- 
nard Barton, of August 10, 1827, occurs the following charming 
passage: "You have well described your old-fashioned paternal 
hall. Is it not odd that every one's recollections are of some 
such place? I had my Blakesware (' Blakesmoor' in the London). 
Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion, better if 
un- or partially-occupied : peopled with the spirits of deceased 
members of the county and justices of the Quorum. Would I 
were buried in the peopled solitudes of one with my feelings 
at seven years old ! Those marble busts of the emperors, they 
seemed as if they were to stand forever, as they had stood from 
the living days of Rome, in that old marble hall, and I to par- 
take of their permanency. Eternity was, while I thought not of 
time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and 
corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and its princely 
gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that, chirping about the 
grounds, escaped the scythe only by my littleness." A. 

Note 2. Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), English poet. 

Note 3. Ovid (43 b. c-18 a. d.), a leading Roman poet 
of the Augustan Age, whose stories in Metamorphoses are here 
alluded to. 

Note 4. Actaeon, a hunter, beheld Diana bathing, who 
changed him into a stag, as punishment, and gave him over to 
her dogs. Lamb refers here to his sprouting horns. Cf. Ovid's 
Metamorphoses, Book III. 

Note 5. Marsyas, a mortal, once came upon the flute of 
Athene, and finding that he could draw forth celestial music 
he challenged Apollo to a musical contest. The Muses voted 



220 NOTES 

the music of Marsyas the better, and in revenge Apollo flayed 
him alive. Cf. Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VI. 

Note 6. Marvell, on Appleton House, to the Late Fairfax. A. 

Note 7. This family traces its descent back to William de 
Mowbray (d. 1222?), one of the executors of Magna Charta. 
The name is perpetuated in Shakespeare's Richard II. 

Note 8. The first Clifford on record is Walter de Clifford 
(d. 1190?), whose sons' names figure in the Domesday Book. 
Jane Clifford is the "Fair Rosamond" alluded to in the essay 
on The South-Sea House; cf. there, note 14. 

Note 9. The Latin motto, meaning " I shall rise again." 

Note 10. Damcetas and JEgon are shepherds in Virgil's third 
Eclogue. 

Note 11. Lamb disguises the family of Plumer under this 
change of initial. He certainly did not mean the Wards — 
Mr. Ward not having become connected with the family of 
Plumer till several years later than the date of this essay. A. 

Note 12. See note 21 , Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years 
Ago. 

Note 13. See note 8, Dream Children : A Reverie. 

Note 14. See note 6, Dream Children : A Reverie. 

Note 15. The god of the pastures, flocks, and streams. 

Note 16. The god of the forest. 

Note 17. Non omnis moriar, Horace's Odes, III, 30, 36. 

POOR RELATIONS 

{London Magazine, May, 1823.) 

Note 1. Agathocles was the son of a humble potter, but he 
rose to the generalship of the army and finally became ruler of 
all Sicily. 

Note 2. Cf. Esther iv, 1-3 ; Luke xvi, 20 ; 1 Kings xiii, 24; 
Exodus viii, 3, 6; Ecclesiastes x, 1; Matthew vii, 3; Luke x, 42; 
Proverbs xxvi, 1 (?). 

Note 3. Sometimes he had to be restrained. 

Note 4. See Vanbrugh's comedy, The Confederacy. A . 

Note 5. The Favell of the essay, Christ's Hospital Five 
and Thirty Years Ago. Lamb, in his "Key" to the initials used 
by him, has written against the initial F., there employed: 
"Favell left Cambridge, because he was asham'd of his father, 
who was a house-painter there." He was a Grecian in the 
school in Lamb's time, and when at Cambridge wrote to the 
Duke of York for a commission in the army, which was sent 
him. Lamb here changes both his friend's name and his Uni- 
versity. A. 

Note 6. Nessus was a centaur slain by Hercules. He told 
the wife of Hercules, Dejanira, that if she would steep her 
husband's shirt in his blood, it would preserve Hercules's love 
for her. Hercules was, however, poisoned to death by the 
shirt. 



NOTES 221 

Note 7. Hugh Latimer (1485-1555), the famous prelate. As a 
boy he attended Cambridge, where he wore the servitor's gown. 

Note 8. Richard Hooker (1553-1600), the celebrated theo- 
logian, a graduate of Oxford. 

Note 9. St. Luke, according to tradition, was a painter as well 
as a physician. 

Note 10. See the concluding lines of Paradise Lost, Book 
IV, of which this is a more than usually free adaptation. In 
the incident referred to, the angel Gabriel and Satan are on the 
point of engaging in struggle, when 

".The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, 
Hung forth in heaven his golden scales." 

Satan's attention being called to the sight, 

» " — The fiend looked up, and knew 

His mounted scale aloft ; nor more : but fled 
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night." J\_, 

Note 11. San Sebastian (Spain) was besieged by Wellington 
in 1813, and finally taken. 

Note 12. Hugo Grotius (de Groot) (1583-1645) was a famous 
Dutch jurist, and is commonly credited with being the founder 
of the science of international law. 

STAGE ILLUSIONS 

{London Magazine, August, 1831.) 

Note 1. John Bannister (1760-1836), a celebrated English 
comedian. 

Note 2. Gat tie, Henry (1774-1844), singer and actor. As a 
rule he played the parts of old men, notably of Frenchmen and 
Irishmen. 

Note 3. Emery, John (1777-1822), a famous actor of his day; 
the original of the part of Tyke in Morton's School of Reform, 
1805. 

Note 4. The flippant young courtier in Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

Note 5. French, Benjamin (1778-1843), a well-known actor; 
the first Sir John Freeman in Free and Easy. 

SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 

{New Monthly Magazine, May, 1826.) 

Canon Ainger says of this essay, " No detached sentence can 
convey an idea of this splendid argument. Nothing that Lamb 
has written proves more decisively how large a part the higher 
imagination plays in true criticism." The essay was first pub- 
lished as a sequel to Popular Fallacies. 

Note 1. From Cowley's fine lines — a true "In Memoriam" 
— On the Death of Mr. William Hervey. A . 

Note 2. Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I, 296, 543. 



222 NOTES 

Note 3. Cf . Shakespeare's King Lear, Act III, for the descrip- 
tion of the king's madness. 

Note 4. Timon, in Shakespeare's tragedy Timon of Athens, 
is the typical misanthrope. 

Note 5. The faithful follower of Lear's misfortunes, acting 
as his adviser and guardian. 

Note 6. The honest servant of Timon. 

Note 7. The son of Oceanus and Tethys, who had the power 
to change his form at will. 

Note 8. The repulsive monster, half man, half beast, whom 
Shakespeare in The Tempest makes the slave of Prospero. 

Note 9. The witches in Macbeth. 

Note 10. Wither, George (1588-1667), an English poet. 

Note 11. Better known as the novels of the Minerva Press, 
from which Lane the publisher issued innumerable works. A. 

Note 12. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, V, iii. 

Note 13. Cf. Macbeth, II, i. 

Note 14. For it the whole of the story alluded to, see Spen- 
ser's Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto vii, the legend of Sir Guyon. 

Note 15. Vulcan. 

Note 16. The golden apples of Hesperides, to procure which 
was one of the labors of Hercules. 

Note 17. Tantalus betrayed the secrets of the gods, and for 
this he was condemned to stand in Hades in deep water under 
a laden fruit tree, and to find that both retreated from him 
when he tried to appease his hunger or thirst. 

Note 18. Cf. "When Pilate saw that he could prevail no- 
thing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and 
washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent 
of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." Matthew xxvii, 24. 

Note 19. The one-eyed giants of Greek mythology who as- 
sisted Vulcan at his forge. 

'THE superannuated man 

{London Magazine, May, 1825.) 

An account, substantially true to facts, of Lamb's retirement 
from the India House. This event occurred on the last Tues- 
day of March, 1825, and Lamb, after his custom, proceeded 
to make it a subject for his next essay of Elia. He here trans- 
forms the directors of the India House into a private firm of 
merchants. The names Boldero, Merryweather, and the others, 
were not those of directors of the company at the time of Lamb's 
retirement. Lamb retired on a pension of £450, being two- 
thirds of his salary at that date. Nine pounds a year were 
deducted to assure a pension to Mary Lamb in the event of 
her surviving her brother. "Here am I," writes Charles to 
Wordsworth shortly afterwards, "after thirty-three^ years' 
slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock, this finest 
of all April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the 



NOTES 223 

remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who out- 
lived his annuity and starved at ninety." A. 

Note 1. Cf. Virgil's Eclogues, I. 

Note 2. O'Keefe, John (1747-1833), an Irish dramatist. 

Note 3. The Lacy mentioned later. 

Note 4. The Bosanquet mentioned later. 

Note 5. The fictitious names which Lamb gives to the di- 
rectors of the India House. 

Note 6. The last words of the Venetian historian, Paolo 
Sarpi (1552-1623). 

Note 7. The state prison in Paris so notorious during the 
days of the French Revolution. 

Note 8. Inaccurately quoted from Middleton's Mayor of 
Queenboro', Act I, Sc. i. It should be " in a rough desart." A. 

-Note 9. The lines are from The Vestal Virgin, or the Roman 
Ladies, Act V, Sc. i. Sir Robert Howard (1626-1698) was Dry- 
den's brother-in-law, and joint author with him of the Indian 
Queen. A . 

Note 10. Of Lamb's fellow clerks in the India House, re- 
ferred to here by their initials, Ch was a Mr. Chambers, 

PI was W. D. Plumley, the son of a silversmith in Cornhill, 

and Do a Mr. Henry Dodwell, evidently one of Lamb's most 

intimate friends in the office. Their names occur in an unpub- 
lished letter of Lamb's to Mr. Dodwell, now lying before me. 
It is addressed "H. Dodwell, Esq., India House, London. (In 
his absence may be opened by Mr. Chambers.) " The letter is 
so characteristic that I may be allowed to quote some passages. 
It is written from Calne in Wiltshire, where Lamb was spending 
his summer holiday, in July, 1816: — 

" My dear Fellow — I have been in a lethargy this long while 
and forgotten London, Westminster, Marlybone, Paddington; 
they all went clean out of my head, till happening to go to a 
neighbour's in this good borough of Calne, for want of whist 
players we fell upon Commerce. The word awoke me to a re- 
membrance of my professional avocations and the long-con- 
tinued strife which I have been these twenty-four years en- 
deavouring to compose between those grand Irreconcileables — 
Cash and Commerce. I instantly called for an almanack, which 
with some difficulty was procured at a fortune-teller's in the 
vicinity (for the happy holiday people here having nothing to 
do keep no account of time) , and found that by dint of duty I 
must attend in Leadenhall on Wednesday morning next, and 
shall attend accordingly. . . . Adieu! Ye fields, ye shepherds 
and -herdesses, and dairies and cream-pots, and fairies, and 
dances upon the green. I come! I come! Don't drag me so hard 
by the hair of my head, Genius of British India! I know my 
hour is come — Faustus must give up his soul, O Lucifer, O 
Mephistopheles ! Can you make out what all this letter is about? 
I am afraid to look it over, Ch. Lamb. 

"Calne, Wilts. Friday, July something, Old Style, 1816. No 



224 NOTES 

new style here — all the styles are old, and some of the gates 
too for that matter." A. 

Note 11. Sir Thomas Gresham (d. 1579) founded the Royal 
Exchange, and other members of this distinguished family were 
Lord Mayors of London. 

Note 12. The Dick Whittington whose story was the subject 
of many old ballads and nursery tales. 

Note 13. Aquinas, St. Thomas (c. 1225-1274), an Italian 
philosopher. 

Note 14. The order of Carthusian monks was founded in 
1086 by St. Bruno and established at Chartreuse. 

Note 15. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, II, vi. 

Note 16. The famous collection of Greek sculptures brought 
from Athens to England by Lord Elgin about 1800 and placed 
in the British Museum. 

Note 17. Probably a reference to Lamb's Wednesday even- 
ing gatherings, which were in his day almost as famous as those 
at the Holland House. Some of Lamb's regular guests were 
Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Barry Cornwall, Charles Kemble, Lloyd, 
Field, and occasionally Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Cole- 
ridge. 

Note 18. The seat of the royal residence, Windsor Castle, 
founded by William the Conqueror and restored by Queen 
Victoria, who especially enjoyed residence there. 

Note 19. A reference to the beginning of Lucretius's De Re- 
rum Natura, Book II, . . . which Munro translates: "It is sweet, 
when on the great sea the winds trouble its waters, to behold 
from land another's deep distress." Lucas. 

Note 20. From the dramatic fragment, concerning Priam's 
slaughter, declaimed by the player in Hamlet, II, ii. A. 

Note 21. Cf. Milton's II Penseroso, 11. 49, 50. 

Note 22. A fragment of Cicero's phrase, otium cum digni- 
tate, leisure with dignity. 

Note 23. The phrase means '' the work is accomplished," and 
is possibly used here by Lamb for the sake of the pun. 



OLD CHINA 

(London Magazine, March, 1823.) 

Note 1 . This beautiful essay tells its own story — this 
time, we may be sure, without romance or exaggeration of 
any kind. It is a contribution of singular interest to our un- 
derstanding of the happier davs of Charles and Mary's united 
life. A. 

Note 2. A Chinese governor. 

Note 3. The hays was an old English dance, involving some 
intricate figures. It seems to have been known in England up 
to fifty years ago. The dance is often referred to in the writers 
whom Lamb most loved. Herrick, for example, has: — 



NOTES 225 

'-On holy-dayes, when Virgins meet 
To dance the Heyes, with nimble feet." A. 

Note 4. The name for China which the poets have especially 
loved. 

Note 5. A fragrant green tea, from the Chinese word hi-tshun, 
the first crop. 

Note 6. Beautiful wonders. 

Note 7. Mary Lamb. The lives of the brother and sister are 
so bound together, that the illustrations of their joint life af- 
forded by this essay (Mackery End, in Hertfordshire) and that on 
Old China, are of singular interest. They show us the brighter 
and happier intervals of that life, without which indeed it could 
hardly have been borne for those eight-and-thirty years. In 
1805, during one of Mary Lamb's periodical attacks of mania, 
and consequent absences from home, Charles writes: ' I am a 
fool bereft of her cooperation. I am used to look up to her in 
the least and biggest perplexities. To say all that I find her 
would be more than, I think, anybody could possibly under- 
stand. She is older, wiser, and better than I am; and all my 
wretched imperfections I cover to myself by thinking on her 
goodness." Compare also the sonnet written by Charles in one 
of his "lucid intervals" when himself in confinement, in 1796, 
ending with the words, — 

". — the mighty debt of love I owe, 
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend." A. 

Note 8. Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher 
(1579-1625) wrote their dramas (13) in collaboration. 

Note 9. An old bookshop at No. 20, Great Russell Street. 

Note 10. Lamb was living in 1823 in a cottage in Islington, 
a borough in the north of London. 

Note 11. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the famous Italian 
painter, architect, and sculptor. 

Note 12. A connoisseur whose house at 14, Pall Mall East 
was a famous art centre. A sale of his engravings, rare editions, 
autographs, etc., took place at Christie's in 1829 Cf. note 17, 
My Relations. 

Note 13. Ten miles north of London in Middlesex. 

Note 14. Fourteen miles north of London. 

Note 15. Twelve miles north of London in Essex. 

Note 16. Izaak Walton (1593-1683), author of The Com- 
pleat Angler. Piscator and Viator, two characters in the book, 
meet at Trout Hall. The Lea is a branch of the Thames. 

Note 17. Two comedies by George Colman (1762-1836). 

Note 18. John Bannister (1760-1836); Mrs. Bland, a popu- 
lar actress in the early part of the nineteenth century. 

Note 19. A comedy bv Thomas Morton (1764-1838). 

Note 20. In As You Like It; in Twelfth Night. 

Note 21. From the New Year bv Charles Cotton (1630- 
1687), an English poet. He added A Second Part: On Fly Fish- 
ing to Walton's Compleat Angler. 



226 NOTES 

Note 22. A king of Lydia (6th century b. a), of fabulous 
wealth. 

Note 23. Rothschild, the founder of the famous banking 
house. 

POPULAR FALLACIES 

{The New Monthly Magazine, January to September, 1826.) 

Note 1. Lamb writes to Wordsworth in 1833, when the 
volume was newly out: " I want you in the Popular Fallacies to 
like the ' home that is no home/ and ' rising with the lark.' " The 
former of these naturally interested Lamb deeply, for it contains 
a hardly-disguised account of his own struggles with the crowd 
of loungers and good-natured friends who intruded in his leisure 
hours, and hindered his reading and writing. There is little to 
call for a note in these papers. The pun of Swift's criticised — 
with rare acumen — in the Fallacy, " that the worst puns are 
the best," was on a lady's mantua dragging to the ground a 
Cremona violin. Swift is said to have quoted Virgil's fine — 

".Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae." A. 

Note 2. Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, a favorite book of 
Lamb's. 

Note 3. See note 1. 

Note 4. The bony charger of Don Quixote. 

Note 5. A famous race horse descended from the Darley 
Arabian who was never beaten. 

Note 6. Cf. Note 6, Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist. 

Note 7. That is, the game laws. 

Note 8. Cf. Lamb's The First Tooth (or was it by Mary 
Lamb?) in Poetry for Children. 

Note 9. His own home. Cf. Lamb's letter to Mrs. Words- 
worth, February 18, 1818. 

Note 10. Cf. Ecclesiastes ix, 10. 

Note 11. Paolo and Francesca. Cf. The Divine Comedy, 
Canto V. 

Note 12. Jeremy Taylor (d. 1667), author of Holy Living 
and Holy Dying. 

Note 13. Nebuchadnezzar. Cf. Daniel ii. Lucas. 

Note 14. A Greek poet of the eighth century b. c, author 
of Works and Days and Theogony. 

Note 15. A half -historical, half -legendary Gaelic bard of the 
third century: the authorship of Macpherson's Fingal (1760- 
1763) was falsely ascribed to him. 

Note 16. These lines are from the Apologetical Dialogue at 
the end of Ben Jonson's Poetaster. Lucas. 

Note 17. Cf. Paradise Lost, V, 11. 153 ff. 

Note 18. Cf. Taylor's Holy Dying, I, iii. 

Note 19. Cf. Milton's 11 Penseroso, 11. 83, 84. 



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COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS 

IN THE RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES 
* indicates the years in which the book is required " for reading 
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115. 

109. 
100. 
128. 
105. 
166. 

'35- 
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164. 



Number 

132. Arnold. Sohrab and Rustum 6 

- Bacon. Essays. 2 {Preparing) 

Browning. Poems 6 (selected) , 

Bunyan. Pilgrim's Progress, Part I 2 

Burke. Speech on Conciliation 

Byron. Poems 6 (selected) 

Carlyle. Essay on Burns 8 , 

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Chaucer. Prologue 3 

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De Quincey. Joan of Arc, and "The Eng- 
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161. Dickens. Tale of Two Cities 4 

83. Eliot. Silas Marner 4 . 

42, 130, 131. Emerson. Essays 5 (selected) 

19-20. Franklin. Autobiography 2 

68. Goldsmith. Deserted Village 3 

78. Goldsmith. Vicar of Wakefield 4 , 

91. Hawthorne. House of Seven Gables * 

155. Irving. Life of Goldsmith 

51-52. Irving. Sketch Book 5 (selections) 

79. Lamb's Essays of Elia 5 (selected) 

Longfellow. Miles Standish 6 

Lowell. Vision of Sir Launfal 6 

Macaulay. Essay on Addison 

Macaulay. Lays of Ancient Rome 6 

Macaulay. Life of Johnson 8 

Milton. L'Allegro, 11 Penseroso, etc 

Poe. Poems 6 (selected) 

Pope. Rape of the Lock 3 

Buskin. Sesame and Lilies (selections) 5 . . . . 

Scott. Ivanhoe 4 

Scott. Lady of the Lake 6 

Scott. Quentin Durward 4 

Shakespeare. As You Like It 1 

Henry VI 

Julius Caesar 1 

Macbeth 

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Twelfth Night 1 

60-61. Sir Boger de Coverley Papers 2 

160. Spenser. Faerie Queene, Book 13 

156. Tennyson. Gareth and Lynette, etc. 6. . . . 
140. Thackeray. Henry Esmond 4 

24. Washington. Farewell Address 7 

56. "Webster. 1st Bunker Hill Oration 7 . 



2. 

30- 
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72. 
119. 
147. 
142. 

86. 

53- 
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93- 

163. 

67. 

106. 

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1906 



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The following Requirements for 1909-1911 are not published in the Riverside 
Literature Series: Palgrave's Golden Treasury, 1st Series, Bks. II and III, 3 Bk. 
IV, 6 Mrs, GaskeWs Cranford, 4 Blackmore's Lorna Doone. 4 

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2 , 3 One from each group to be selected for reading, iqoq-iqii. 

7 These two are an alternate for Burke^s Speech, iqoo-iqil. 

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